In your dreams Drarry funniest story from Google Translate
by Limberj
Summary: Both Harry and Draco are having dreams about one another. This fiction was first written in Swedish, but it got sooo much funnier after I translated it in Google Translate without changing anything at all! Originally romance/drama, but now I'll leave it here as Romance/Comedy
1. The dream

This fiction is only a comedy because how stupid it is!

Okay, so… First off; I am Swedish and wrote this DRARRY fanfiction about six years ago, in Swedish of course. That was before I was any good at all in the English language (still need some training though). For this fiction I decided to direct translate in the Google translate thing, BARE WITH ME, just to see how bad it was. And first I thought "well, okay, it's actually kinda good", but the deeper into the text I got the more I laughed myself to tears. This fiction is so much more fun like this than if I was going to try and fix it up to make any sense out of it.

When you translate like this, using Google Translate, some sentences will sound kinda… weird. Take the word "trädde" for instance which means "put on" (as in putting on his glasses), but Google Translate wanted to translate that to "hit". So instead of Harry putting on his glasses, he hit them. And there is so much more like that and I really wanted to share this with more people! Maybe someone has already done something like this, so I'll not take any creds for the idea! (or should I?)

Please read this first chapter and share with me what you laughed about the most, and ask me in the comments if there is something you had no idea at all what I originally meant (Diagon Alley is now called Diagong River), and I will explain it to you!

* * *

The war is over, Lord Voldemort is extinct, the resistance has shattered.  
Harry Potter and his friends Ron, Hermione, Neville and the others begin at Hogwarts again to finish the final year. Now they go along with Luna and Ginny.

Draco Malfoy, who released the Dead Seals at the school in the sixth year and went with the Lord at the last, also had to start over again. Instead of joining Azkaban with his dad, Professor McGonagall gave him a new chance (something Dumbledore would have done) - along with punishments for most of the year.

* * *

 **Chapter 1 - The Dream**

In the summer, Harry had spent at home at the Weasley family as usual. Together with his best friends Ron and Hermione and his girlfriend Ginny; Ron's little sister.

When the sun rose over the mountains one morning, Harry woke up that Ron snuggled into his bed in the corner. He stretched himself behind the glasses on the nightstand table to the right and hit them over the nose.

Harry was eighteen years old, his birthday celebration had been quiet one month earlier. The glasses he was wearing were new, the ones he received from Hermione in a present.  
But it was not the glasses his thoughts wandered for a few seconds after he sat up in bed, without the dream he had before he woke up.

The sweat ran down my back as if it had been a nightmare ... Maybe it was a bit too, it was so ... different.

Harry stood up and shook a little on his head; to have such a dream about Draco Malfoy was something you did not forget directly.

In his dream, he had dueled against his arch enemy from Slytherin, who had occasionally had Voldemort's face. But the times it was turned back to Malfoy, Harry had felt some kind of relief, some kind of satisfaction. The times when it was Malfoy who stood before him with poetry and half-naked eyes Harry had stopped for a second without throwing out more curses. And the third time Harry hesitated, he struck a lame wrangle so hard in his chest that he flew several yards back and hit his back in the wall.

Everything appeared in Hogwart's library, and books lay scattered on the floor with leaves torn out of the pockets.

Harry was still conscious when he lay on the ground and saw Malfoy slowly moving towards his weak body.

He squeezed gently next to Harry, stretched out his hand with a torn face. "Forgive ..." he whispered and beat Harry's cheek. "It'll never happen again. From now on, I'll protect you."

That's when Ron had snorted and woke Harry.

That Malfoy, who hated Harry throughout their schooling, could show something so mercilessly, Harry could not understand. Or why his brain would try to show Malfoy in that way.

"Wake up, buddy?" Ron muttered behind him.

Harry came on by just standing in the middle of the floor and staring at the door. "Oh ... yes." Harry muttered back and ran down two stairs to get to the toilet.

.

.

.

At breakfast, it was talked smoothly around at the table. Harry ate a little in the egg tube without eating it.

"Eat, Harry. We'll go straight when you're done." said Ron and stuffed himself a whole toasted bread and cooled almost without chewing.

"Charming ..." criticized Hermione. "What lessons would you have this year again, Harry?"

"The usual."

"Wondering who will teach in Defense of Black Arts?" I hope there will be someone like Lupin. " said Ginny sitting next to Harry and spreading butter to him.

He muttered in agreement and took a bite of the bread.

.

.

.

Today, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were going to Diagong River to buy books and accessories for their last year at Hogwarts.

While Ginny and Hermione went to Florish and Blotts, Harry and Ron went to Madam Malkin's clothing store, because Ron once again grew out of his school uniform.

Madam Malkins measured and drew in the robe Ron was wearing. She cut and sew, and Harry began to get tired of just sitting there after having been through the fashion magazines that lay on the table next to the couch.

"Is it okay to wait outside?" he asked.

"Sure. I'll try not to die for so long." mumbled Ron impatiently while Madam Malkins ran away for the seventh time to pick up another box of needles.

The sun was hot today, so hot that Harry took off the hoodie so that only the t-shirt was left. He thought he could look around a bit. It was after all the last time he would have to go around here under his own conditions. Who knows when he should come here next time? A trip to the magician's bank may. Harry thought he had not spent enough gold anyway, he must have a visit to Hogsmeade.

As he walked up the stairs to Gringotts Wizard's Bank he heard the voice behind him hoping he would not have to hear in a good while.

"But hello there, Potter. How about getting money, I see?"

Harry turned around and saw Malfoy standing down at the foot of the stairs, supervised alone.

"Yes. Do you mind it?"

"No, but it's good to know where I have you."

"What do you mean by that?" Harry could hear Hermione's voice echo in his head: _"Do not worry about him. Go to your vault now. Just go."_

Malfoy shrugged his shoulders, fired by a mischief, then went to Florish and Blotts where Hermione and Ginny just went out the door.

Harry did not feel like having a conversation with them right now; They had seen Malfoy before talking to him and were about to ask him about it. So he ran the last steps up the stairs and entered the bank.

Apparently, he had been wrong with what Hermione and Ginny had seen, because they did not ask Harry what Malfoy had said.

.

.

.

When they came back to the trunk they all went out to the garden and played a match Quidditch. Harry and Hermione in one team and Ginny and Ron in the other. Hermione began to blame for gender equality (because they were three who could play) when Ron came up with the idea that the girls would play against the guys, so Harry tried to stop their mouthwashing by saying she could join in his team.

They played for an hour without anyone getting upset or upset and closing out for lunch.  
All afternoon, Harry thought about the dream and what Malfoy had said in the morning. But he also tried not to couple the dream and the conversation into a big misunderstanding, but tried to separate them and figure out a solution for them both. The dream was just a dream ... but why would Malfoy keep track of where he was somewhere in the Diagong River? Maybe it was just that they would not end up in the same places again, it looked a bit like Malfoy was also on his way to the bank at the time. And he would know that next time he went to the bank, Harry would not be there. Or? That was the reason why Harry could come on.

.

.

.

A week later, he once again woke up unexpectedly that Ron snuggled to bed in his corner. But this time in the middle of the night, and this time Harry's dream had been more intense than it had been a week before.

It was the same dream as the one before. But now that Malfoy smashed Harry's cheek and promised him that they would not duel again, Harry put his hand on Malfoys and pushed it harder against his child. Malfoy smiled with glassy gray eyes and leaned slowly closer to Harry.

His face was so close that they were now cheeky and then rubbed Malfoy's lips at Harry's ear. "Can you imagine ..." he breathed. "... after all, that's what we've wanted all the time?"

SNORE!

Now the sweat was not only on the back but also in the face, hands, legs, feet ... everywhere. Harry's sheets were almost soaked. And he was so pleased that Ron was not awake or was somewhat experienced about legilimization. Did he talk to sleep? But Ron slept deeply, so he could not hear him.

Harry shook there halfway in bed, supported on his elbows. But he was not afraid, it was a different feeling. Nervousness, adrenaline. Had he liked the dream? Harry tried to think of some kind of psychological solution about dreams ... He likes very badly about Draco Malfoy, but he dreams such things because his brain tries to "make them friends". But it exaggerates a bit and Harry likes it in the dream because it's just what to do in dreams; You simply adapt to the dream.

Everything was spinning in Harry's head. He drew a deep breath and leaned his head backwards, then he felt it. He knew that when he was on ... that mood, just what had happened now also happened. He looked down at his legs and saw the bulging bully on the blanket.

Harry had been awake during the hours before it was time to wake up. When he heard that Ron turned up, he slowly traveled and dressed silently. He quietly opened the door and walked gently down the old stairs - even though they creaked for every step he took - then went out to the farm. The tuppen was not wrong yet so it was silent outside. The sky was dark blue but red with elements of gold far away in the horizon. It was a little chilly outside, but not cold. He nevertheless felt that the fall had come. Today it was September 1st, so today he should meet his ... dream mate at the Hogwartsexpressen.

He did not want to. He did not want to hear words coming from Malfoy's mouth that could make the dream more real than it already felt. It felt so stupid also that he stood there now, at half past six in the morning, and was spotted over a dream. Because that was all it was - a dream. Harry wanted to let go of it, but it always concealed his thoughts. Maybe it would feel better late when everyone woke up and he had to do other things that could help him? The last dream he forgot quite quickly, it did not come back the following day. But now it had been reinforced, and new details had been added.

.

.

.

Breakfast. Last litter on the gasket. Unpack your suitcases and owls in borrowed minivan cars. Kick on luggage and cage through Kings Cross station on the way to the barrier between nine and ten. Slide slowly. Up with the bags on the train. Say goodbye to the rest of the Weasley family. Find an empty compartment.

Everything went ashamed without Harry thinking about Malfoy again. But now that they sat in the cabin and waited for the train to start rolling, the memories came back. It was as though his brain longed for these moments. As if Harry would not forget what he had dreamed. But he did not understand why, because it really was not what it was like.

"No, but ... Nähä, stumble in it then." said Ginny just wound beside him.

"What?" Harry hurried to say. His eyes started to focus and he saw that they were sitting alone in the cabin. Ron and Hermione must have gone to make sure everything went right on the train before departure because they were prefects. "What?" he just repeated and looked at her.

Ginny sat with arms crossed and looked crossed in front of him. "I said I've missed the moments when we're all for ourselves. But that was nothing special."

"Sorry, Ginny ... I ..."

"What's up with you now? You're so absent." She looked worried at Harry. "You can talk to me."

"No, it's nothing. I only ... I ..." he tried to mess up something forgotten from his head that could have something with his behavior to do. "I'm just thinking ... think if he's not gone now. Imagine if I have to do something soon ... prepare me." now he had two things to worry about. Awesome.

"You-Know-Who Will not Come Back, Harry. Not Now Anyway." You must try to relax, think about other things. This is not good for you. " she leaned against his shoulder and banged his arm. "But whatever happens, I will understand. I will support you to one hundred percent, and I will do just as you say without saying."

"Thanks…"

"And you're sure, Harry. Nothing will ever happen to you as long as McGonagall lives and as long as we have the Phoenix Order on our side."

"You're right. I have nothing to worry about." He kissed Ginny on his head and then looked out the window.

Luna and Neville joined the company. Ron and Hermione came back. The lunch cart arrived. Exploding Snap. Stories. Laugh. Memories. Future dreams. Teacher of Defense against Black Arts. Darker outdoors. The train is slowing down. Hagrid hugs Harry. Taking the drug pulled off a test tube. In front of school. The main hall. WHAM!

"Are not you a daddy who dares show you again, Potter?" He was just behind Harry at the Slytherin table.

Harry dared not turn around, he did not want to see him in his eyes. He did not want to get back the dream he so carefully tried to forget about.

 _Too late_ ... mumbled a voice in his head.

"Shut up with you, Malfoy." he heard Ron milling across the table.

"Destroy him." Hermione muttered to the right.

It was always the same show. Malfoy said something, Ron said something back, Hermione advised him not to care while Harry just sat and shut up.

"Tell me exactly what you mean, Malfoy?" Harry said completely and turned his legs over the bench so that he was sitting just opposite him.

Malfoy did the same thing and they were now face to face. Harry saw his hand pulling a little near the pocket on the robe where his stick could be.

Malfoy opened his mouth to say something but Harry him before. "And do not bother with pulling the stick. The hall is filled with teachers and prefects." his hand was broken and Malfoy got something rebellious in his eyes. "So, what do you mean by me, I'm drowsy who shows me here again?"

"I mean you're going to suit me, Potter." sneaked Malfoy "Do not be in the way. You know what can happen." he put his right hand over the left forearm.

"I just know what you have there and I'm not afraid of you, Malfoy. Nothing about you scares me." but there Harry recalled the dream again, and it scared him a bit like Malfoy to do.

He grimaceed and Malfoy took it as a weak sign.

He triumphed triumphantly with half-closed eyes and leaned backwards. "Thought so."  
Harry continued staring into Malfoy's gray eyes. He did not really know why, but something was hidden there. Something Harry did not know about. Finally, Malfoy's face was changed, it was first confused and then angry.

Harry blew hard and then turned to his own table again.

"You should really go to bed tonight, mate." whispered Ron with locked eyes and wrinkled forehead.

"Yes." agreed Hermione. "What was that about? Did you try to stare him down?"

"You are right. I should leave early."

The sorting hat sorted new students into their student home. It sang. Professor McGonagall (the new president) spoke. The new teacher in Defense for Black Arts was called Angus McGuffin. Dinner. Dessert. Schemes were awarded by Professor McGonagall. Ginny kissed Harry in Gryffindor's lounge room. Harry lay down in bed. Dark. Silent. Snoring.  
Harry fell asleep.

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.

.

The days passed and the competition for Gryffindor's Quidditch team was due to take place on the 12th of September on a Saturday. Harry was the team captain, so he would hold the matches to get as good a team as possible. Ron and Ginny, who had participated in the previous year, did not have to be included in the actual tests, but they would help to test the trial.

Two new hunters and two battles were needed for the team.

Dean Thomas got one of the hunting places - Harry did not mind him anymore. He was not in love with Ginny anymore and they shared the bedrooms, so no hard feelings there.

The second hunting position actually went to Neville. He had been training on a broom now for several years without saying anything, so he was not as clumsy anymore as he once had.  
The perpetrators became the twins Daniel and Tom Wibbly who went fourth in Hogwarts.  
Harry was happy with his choice and that was the rest of the team too, so he could go away with a headed head and have dinner in school.

* * *

Harry's bulging bully on the blanket and Hermione saying "Destroy him" at the dinner… my sides…

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	2. Penalty

Thank you for the favorites **HydraAlexandre** and **skyjadeprincess**!  
And to my new followers: **HydraAlexandr** **e** , **SvartaAnkan** and **millerc742**!

This chapter did not make any sense at all lol! It almost sounded like I wanted to write a Shakespear play at the end!

* * *

 **Chapter 2 – Penalty**

"What is your problem?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"You do not answer when I talk to you."

"Have I ever listened to what you say, Goyle?"

Goyle stared rebelliously against Draco before he fired and walked through the door to the dorms. "Have fun tomorrow, Malfoy!" he cried out before smashing it again.

Draco was left with only the thoughts he so fervently tried to sort the whole evening.  
That Potter, everything had become much sharper this year, Draco thought. How he understood was another riddle. Certainly, they had always been rattled over the years at Hogwarts, but this time it seemed like Potter saw him, Draco, in another way. As if he felt sorry for him. It was in any case what he thought Potter's facial expression had shown at dinner the first night at Hogwarts.

But it was not just then... Sometimes when they saw each other and Draco had a quick desire to throw a curse over Potter, or to kill him, he had first looked shocked that they met in the corridor or wherever they were - but then he had got that grimace again as Draco really regretted. And after that he had looked surprised, turned his back and walked in the direction he came from.

What was his problem, really? Sometimes he was probably enough to answer - something that the skull and the bloodshed always tried to stop - and succeeded - until now, but many times it seemed that he was afraid of the mere sight of the Slytherin.

Something strange has happened. Something he has to know.

Draco's father was still in Azkaban, and his mother had the whole big house all to himself and was certainly ill of concern for what might happen to her husband. Draco himself has punishments throughout the semester ... but it would not be something that Potter would sit and cheat on, but on the contrary - if it had been a year ago he'd laughed at him. Or?

He should be afraid! He thought and dunk his fist on the couch next to him. Death seeker was released on Hogwarts thanks to Draco, and they even managed to kill Dumbledore! The greatest wizard of all time! Nevertheless, McGonagall had sent a letter to Draco where it was said that he had another chance because that was what Dumbledore had done. That Draco had not really known what he was about to have been forced by Lord Voldemort ...

But what did the facial expressions mean? Because he did not know Potter, he could not read them properly.

If not ... yes, if not now Potters had actually begun to show respect for Draco and now actually was afraid?

There was no point in continuing to think about it. Potter would only make him confused ... just wanted to be damn with him.

Draco looked into the fire that slowly cracked in the fireplace, it was about to die out, it was late ... Tomorrow he would have the whole castle for himself. It was Saturday the ninth of September, the first excursion day to Hogsmeade, and he would have a punishment together with the messy old man Filch.

Draco hit his head in the bedside table on the way down the floor. He slowly sat up, bumped and felt for a future bump in the side of the skull.

"What are you doing over there?" Blaise Zabini murmured from the bed opposite.

But Draco did not answer, he just climbed up on the bed again and pulled the veil around it so that he would not see. Had this been a normal night, he would probably have been embarrassed - without showing it of course - that he was rolling out of bed ... but not in the night.

A nightmare. He had a nightmare. Such a disgusting, nervous and terribly horrible nightmare that Draco now sat and held the stomach for bubbling of vomiting. Why in the name of the world would he want to do something as abominable as he did in the dream? He would not even think about it. Just wanted to forget, put the obliviatus confession on itself.

He and Potter? The downy, disgusting pots ... Stand and hold your hands on the whipping arrow tree and discuss if they are going to infect the ghostly cottage together and ... NO! Why? Why, why and why?

He did not fall asleep that night. Without lying awake, he shook while waiting for something. But he does not know what he was waiting for. That the sun would go up? Better times? That someone would give him a poisoned drink so he could kill himself? The latter sounded attractive ... But why would he do such a thing over a dream?

Draco was ready for the next morning when he heard that the others in the room began to move and wake up. Time for breakfast. Do not hope he's sitting there when I come ... Draco thought as he walked up the stairs from the basement to the Big Hall, alone. It was Saturday, and anyone who would - and could - would go down to Hogsmeade later today. But Draco, he would not go anywhere, because he had punishment to perform. Sigh.

Some morning girls from third-class students from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were already in the dining room and ate. Clearly they were tomorrow morning, it was the first time they would visit the wizard's village.

He settled down somewhere in the center of Slytherin's table and began to take care of the food. What stupid he's been wearing ... Get so excited about a dream - a pissed dreary dream - and missed a whole night's sleep because of it. Draco decided to go downstairs and try to sleep for a while right after he had eaten.

The teapot went well. He got his sleep for two hours and then went straight to the janitor's office. Draco's first task of the day was to put the school's pockets and the entire cabinet. Not so hard but boring. As he sat and polished, he thought about how much fun everyone else must have right now. Not because Draco himself liked going to Hogsmeade - in fact, he did not think anything was particularly fun - but he could imagine how it was for everyone else. That one, happiness, euphoria, happiness ... be happy.

Why could he, Draco, never just be happy? There was really no luck at all in his life, but there was nothing he could walk around and say to others. Even his former girlfriend, Pansy Parkinson, dumped him last year just because she thought he was boring and ... depressed all the time.

Yikes, thought Draco, depressed? Why?

He had money, could get everything he wanted and point to ... but why could not he settle? Was it really as you said - that money is not everything?

It's just stupid. Clearly you'll be lucky if you have money.

He thought it must be this stupid school that affects him. The people here who were stupid and exceedingly happy about nothing. But as soon as his career starts, he will get the power he deserves, and he can avenge anyone who has ever hurt him.

Draco laughed a bit for himself. I'm happy just thinking about it, so I'll be happier as soon as I finish school, he thought. He discovered that he was sitting on the floor and did not remember how he ended up there. So he got up quickly and looked around, not wanting anyone to have seen that he was not doing his job.

He brushed his pants and sighed, now they were certainly completely destroyed by the dirty floor. Draco did not return to continue to put the pockets, but instead went to a couch a few meters further down the corridor.

.

.

.

The lunch he spent with students from the first and second grade courses, and from third grade students who had been tired of visiting Hogsmeade, or saved the money when they really needed it.

Draco sat with Theodor Nott from his own grade, he did not like the others from Slytherin ... actually he did not like Theodor either, but he had about the same interests as Draco.

"So, this chick then ..." babbled Nott. "... I said she would come to my bedroom after dinner tonight. I'll try to spread around to the others that they can stay away. You are, of course. "

"Certainly." murmured Draco. He did not care to be nice and let Nott get the room tonight to spend time with his new girl, he just could not say.

Nott always did so anyway; brought girls from the lower classes to the room and sent them out to others. The only thing that really served was Zabini, but he rarely won the battle because he himself needed to have the room at times. Draco had never sent out his roommates to have a girl over. Pansy had slept over anyway. And those who did not get out of what was happening in his bed could kindly leave the room themselves.

He did not think he was more right than what others had in the room, but he did not feel he needed to boss over those who could make him big and important services in the future.

"So how are you doing with the team?" Asked Nott after having put his glass of pumpkin juice, he just had a bite.

"Ah, I do not really care."

"Should not you ask someone else to be the captain then?"

"Well, maybe ..." Draco threw a quick glance over the room to see who arrived through the door. It was Pansy and her girl friend. They did not even look at him when they sat at the far end of the table.

"Oh-ho-oh!" laughed Nott. "Call the eye! What have you done now?"

"What I've done?" Draco looked into Nott's eyes with a wrinkle on the forehead.

"I have never seen her so pissed before she looked at you. Come on, what have you been doing this time?"

"I've never done anything to her?" Draco was almost angry. How did he find out?

"Ah, but ... come on. You've been together for several years back? She sat far away and did not even greet you, just watched your way."

"Did she?" Draco must have missed it completely. "No, we do not hang out anymore. It ended before the end of the sixth." He was careful not to tell who it was that ended.

It was a bit embarrassing indeed. That he, Draco Malfoy, was dumped by a girl. A bit ugly as well. He would not have given her any further attention, or treated her like a girlfriend. But still, it would have been he who dumped her? But Draco had no idea at all what a relationship could mean. He had no direct feelings for Pansy, and probably never had any. If he had not been in love without noticing it. He did not miss her, and did not think of her all the days ... So in love, he probably was never; he'd just hung up in the stream and tried to be someone who could get a girl without barely asking her.

He had not shown her any respect at all. Perhaps that's why she did not want to be with him? How handsome and rich he was? There must have been something more that the igel would have ... feelings.

"Ah," sighed Nott, as if he had understood something hidden in Draco's eyes. He drained Draco in his back and got up. "Girls are nothing to have. Just to find a new one, right?"

Draco thought to protest, but did not think it was worth discussing. Nott may believe what he wants.

"I was going to go down to the living room."

"Of course." sighed Draco and looked away from Pansy.

Slut.

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.

.

In the afternoon, Draco went down to the lodge's cabin. If his father had not been in prison, he'd stopped this. It was more than punishment, it was suicide. Or murder, if that half-man planned to throw another dangerous animal over Draco.

He walked over the lawn and took a look beyond the vast area between the mountains and the forest, and the ladder that led from Hogsmeade up to the castle's eastern side. He heard a bunch of people talking loudly and laughing, and among them went Harry Potter. It was him, the dirt skull and the bloodshed. They could not see Draco, who was now hiding behind a large rock about fifty yards from the ladder. He did not hear what they said, but waited until the voices disappeared behind the curve so he could sneak out again.

"Malfoy, what are you doing?" When he turned around, he saw Professor McGonagall coming from the half-way cottage. She had probably seen him stupidly sit and cheat behind the stone. "Did you spy on Potter and his friends?"

"Obviously not!" he protested badly, the self-defense instinct started. He almost sounded like a little child who had been bothered to make a joke and is now grieving for justice. "What do they have to say that would interest me?"

"Yes, I wonder too. Will not you be at Hagrid now?"

"Does not it look like I'm on my way?"

"Not the tone of a teacher, Malfoy. Be careful not to get a deduction."

"Sorry, Professor." murmured Draco and lowered his head in a lamenting regrettable gesture.

"Good day." she slipped away, further towards the school.

Draco resisted the temptation that childishly put out her tongue to her back, and walked towards the half-timbered cottage in the woods.

His second task was to sort batsmen to the third-year students lesson that would be held in a few hours. He had thick gloves on it, but it was still scary when the worms ringed out of his grip and down to the ground. He jumped up with a scream and tried to avoid getting the shame on his expensive designer shoes.

"Yes, please, Malfoy!" shouted Hagrid from the discount under the window on the other side of the garden. "They will not hurt you! Just pick up those who hit the ground with my gloves."

Draco swallowed the bad slings would have liked to throw out - really banish that stupid half-giant - and instead mumbled some swords and picked up the flattering mask carefully and put it back in the jar. It was not that he wanted to improve, but just wanted to pretend he would improve and maybe let go of these penalties a little earlier.

Actually, he would have ended up in Azkaban ... But McGonagall had said that Dumbledore - the old man who saw good things in all and wanted to give everybody a new chance - would have looked so he would not end there at all because he did not act on his own watch over the last two years. He had already reached seventeen years before, but if the ministry had received his will, let Draco end up in Azkaban, he'd been there a long time ago. Horrible thought.

After a few hours, Draco was ready with the flattering worms and would go up to the school's library, where he would help the library director Madam Pince to put the books in the right places - something he did not look forward to.


	3. The book

**Chapter 3 - The Book**

During lunch at Three Tassels, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny had discussed the most common topic; Quidditch. Not Hermione so much - who constantly tried to talk about lessons and homework - but she sat listening carefully until she did not hurry more and picked up a book at the dinner table. They had arrived too late at noon, so they would not go to school without getting caught on three tassels instead. And all Quidditch snacks made time faster and they did not go back to school until half past three o'clock.

"Well, we do not have any lessons anyway. Then we can start the training whenever we want." said Ron pleased as they went on the ladder to school.

"But you have to study too, Ron." Hermione reminded him. "N.E.W.T. exams ..."

"Is at the end of the year." he interrupted her.

"But that does not mean you can relax for it! If you start planning on time, it will be easier for you to remember!"

"As you remember, I already know a lot. I mean, everything we went through while looking for horror jokes."

"But that's not all ..."

Ron stretched out his tongue, shaped his hand like a beak and tried to imitate Hermione's cheat.  
And there the mouthwash was started again.

Harry sighed and grabbed Ginny's hand. She looked up at him and smiled.

"Damn ..." she muttered.

"What?" asked Harry and tried to ignore the raised voices of Ron and Hermione.

"Well, I'm sorry. But I have to go back. I forgot my hat on Three Brooms."

Not because it was cold enough for a hat; she obviously had it for her eyesight. Girls.

"I'm coming with."

"No. Go ahead, you see you in the living room!" Ginny stood on his toe, kissed Harry and ran elsewhere.

"Where would she go?" asked Hermione and looked for Ginny where she jogged.

"She forgot ..."

"But everyone is not as smart and prepared as you are!" Ron stopped again.

Harry just sighed again and continued on.

As they approached the school, he thought the other two would have already spoken clearly, but they just said the same things over and over again. "Please ..." he exclaimed loudly. "Please, can not you just be quiet?"

"But she says ..."

"Ronald does not like that ..."

"AND?" shouted Harry, stopped and stamped with his foot.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other and it actually shook a bit in their mungos. It was a long time since Harry had raised the voice to them in that way.

"Sorry, buddy." Ron said, throwing his arm over Harry's shoulders.

Hermione clasped on his other side and hooked his arm in his right. "We are quite childish sometimes, right?"

"No wonder we've been together for almost eight years. How can you grow from it?" asked Harry.

The other two laughed and they continued to the castle much calmer and happier. They went up for the marble staircase in the entrance hall and continued on to the Gryffindor tower.

"The training starts seven tonight, Ron, right after the food." said Harry before they stepped in through the portraits. Hermione had already said the password to The Great Lady.

"Okay, I'll say to Dean and the others."

"Do we see before dinner?" wondered Hermione while Harry walked up the stairs to the boys' dorms.

"I really do not know. But I will come here when I'm done, otherwise we'll see you in the big room."

Hermione nodded and sat next to Ron in a couch. Harry continued into the dormitory and fetched his magic wand he had forgotten in another pair of jeans he had had on the day before. It was very rare that he had forgotten his magic wand, but Ginny had arrived in the morning and woke him up saying that they should go to Hogsmeade soon. Harry also slept so long without waking up himself in the morning. But then it would have been that dream that came back from the summer holidays.

That dream.

It was a bit different this time. He had walked through a dark corridor at school only lit by torches. But slowly shifted it from stone to earth, and he discovered that he walked through the hallway from the whining arrow tree to the ghostly cottage in Hogsmeade. In his dream, he knew where he was going, and what he would do when he arrived, but was still surprised when he opened the door to the bedroom where he met his godfather Sirius for the first time.

On the bed, where Ron had a broken leg and his rat Scabbers - who later turned out to be the death sinner and James Potter's old friend Peter Pettigrew - in his arms, someone else was waiting and waiting. Not Ron.

The bed was bedside in the black side and the room was lit by candles. Side pillows lay scattered on the floor, as if someone just threw them down for better seating. The room looked clean, with dark, glossy wood floors and freshly painted walls. But Harry's eyes looked for the bed and the stranger lying in it.

"Do you just stand there?" wondered Malfoy.

He lay in bed in an extremely challenging position and had something over the face that seemed welcome. His head was slightly bent down, but he looked up at Harry with sparkling silver eyes through his eyelashes and a cheeky smile. He carried nothing on the body except a pair of small black underwear that revealed more skin than Harry had desired.

Harry walked slowly, but definitely, he was not nervous anymore, as in the dreams before. He laid his knees on the floor in front of Malfoy so that their faces ended up at the same height. He looked long into the gray eyes looking for answers without words.

But then Harry asked: "Why?"

"How do you mean?" asked Malfoy with seductive voice.

"Why do you return in my dreams like this? And why ... do I like it?"

"What dreams?" wondered his fantasies. "How do you think it's a dream?"

Harry waited a while to answer it, trying to remember the reason why he knew he was dreaming. "We do not like each other. And I do not think we should ever start to like each other in this way."

"Why should you always ruin everything, Potter?"

Green smoke swirled around Draco. Now he got up in bed. The roof cracked, the rear wall wiped out as if it were hurricane, and now Lord Voldemort stood in front of Harry. With pale skin, red eyes and magic wand in front of him.

And that was where Ginny had woken him that morning.

Harry went down to the living room again, encountered Ginny who just stepped in through the portrait hole and gave her a kiss. "See you tonight!" he called for her as he jogged through the corridor to the stairs that swung and changed place.

He came to a stone statue and said, "Smiling lingon lilies", which was the password.

A spiral staircase rose from the floor and Harry jumped up. Dumbledore's password just got worse and stranger, even when he was not principal.

Just as Harry raised his hand to knock the door of the office of the headmaster, one voice said, "Come in, Harry."

He opened the door and stepped in.

Professor McGonagall stood at a high window and looked out over the school's fields. "I see that the patch did not show him in time. I had forgotten how punctual you could be, sometimes." she muttered and opened one of the boxes to let in a big and majestic tower owl.

But instead of sitting and stretching out the leg of McGonagall, the owl flew through the room and sat on a table with thin legs and stretched his leg to Harry. "To me?" he wondered and looked puzzled, but clutched the knot and took the letter from the owl.

 _Harry_ _  
_ _I need a book from the library. I could have picked it myself if I did not know you'd go by there on the way here._

Then there was a name, and Harry understood that it was the name of the book.

 _I hope this message arrives on time, so we do not have to wait both times unnecessarily._ _  
_ _Sincerely_ _  
_ _Minerva McGonagall._

"Should I…?"

"Yes, if you want it, Harry. I'm sorry."

"I hurry."

He ran down the spiral staircase and jogged back in the corridor he came from. Then he turned to the left on a crossing and on to a staircase that led downwards. As he jumped straight ahead in the next corridor, he came back to the stairs that swung and jumped on someone who just turned down to the way he should.

He came to the library closing, and took his waist where he got hold and tried to get the breath.

"Are you running in the corridors, boy?" It was Madam Pince who was just heading out of the library.

"Sorry, madam Pince ..." Harry stabbed. "Case to the principal. I have to enter the forbidden section."

"You're welcome to sit and wait. I have not been on the girls all day." She trampled away with Harry grimaceing behind her. In any case, she could not have told him what to do.

He slowly went in and sat down at the nearest table. He breathed out, stretched out his legs, leaned back and closed. He heard someone sneak around at the bookshelves to the right of him, but it was probably only a student who was looking for books for his student. He continued to shut up, heard the steps come closer and then books like down the floor.  
Harry turned his face and saw Malfoy standing staring at him with big eyes. Books lay down at his feet, and the face of Harry must have got him to drop them.

With a flashy move, Malfoy drew up the magic wand and stood now and glanced deeply at Harry, almost the horror.

Harry got up slowly but did not make his own magic wand. The first dream was about to come true and he was going to do everything to stop it. "I'm not here to fight. What do you think is about? Smiles around behind the shelves and then try to overcome me?"

Malfoy still said nothing and made a effort to stop the stake again. But the hand just fell down to the waist. Harry stared at him as if he was afraid to have a curse thrown over him ... or something else would happen.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" then asked Malfoy Pulp. He tried to sound hot, but the voice broke a bit.

"Does it matter to you?"

Malfoy got red on his face, but Harry did not see if it was because he was embarrassed or angry. He felt the pocket where his stake lay, he would still be prepared.

"Now you have fun, Potter? Really funny, or how to see me have a punishment. Come here and laugh at me. I heard you were breathless - you certainly walked all the way here because you wanted to see me do my punishment - and then laugh at me!"

"I had no idea ..."

"No idea! It's clear that you know! Do not you think I've noticed how different you've become? What's your game? What's it that you want me? Answer me!"

Harry just opened his eyes to the raised Slytherin life, who once again raised his stake. He sounded both pissed and desperate, something Harry definitely did not count on.

"You ... your problems you can solve yourself. I'm not going to stand here and listen."

"And you have not even formulated the stick yet. You who really love a challenge let it remain in your pocket. You have them too, right?" he asked and looked almost crazy. "The dreams."

An ice cold wave rinsed over Harry. Not a wave without bouncing. An electric shock. Did Malfoy have the same dreams as Harry, or did he only have other dreams that made him so upset? Harry dared not say anything, did not want to get rid of it. "What dreams?" he asked shut up, with his breath in his throat as if he had been breathed again. "What are you talking about?"

"I do not know how you care, but somehow you have planted them in my brain - I know that!"

"Tell me exactly what you ..."

"Stop playing cough! I've already said that I've seen how you're doing around me! I've had them all summer ..." He almost looked close to the cry.

Without looking at Malfoy again, Harry began to run.

He did not know where he was going, just he wanted to go as far away from the library as possible. As he jumped past the staircase to the Ravenclaw Tower, he realized that McGonagall was still waiting for him inside his office.

"Harry, what a surprise." mumbled the professor without looking at him when Harry lifted the hand for the second time to knock the door - but this time did not happen because the principal himself opened it. "I thought you'd forgotten me." She peered Harry over the edge of the glasses, a little more serious.

"The professor, I ... sorry, but I did not get the book ..."

"Would not Madam Pince help you find it?"

"Well ... but I ..."

"It does not matter, Harry. Come in." She moved out of the way so Harry could go into the office, closing the door after them both. "I'm lucky I have an extra copy here." McGonagall went and sat down behind the desk without looking up, but luckily, because Harry could not have looked particularly happy. "It is indeed a very old copy ... One of the first to write and is therefore hard read and ... yes, see for yourself."

Harry went to the desk and looked down at the book McGonagall presented. He read the cover.

"But it's not the book you told me to retrieve ... or?" Harry began to stumble around in his pocket in search of the patch the owl gave him.

"This is the original, Harry. The ones in the library are rewritten, and the title was changed as well."

Harry began to think ... How could you get _Wizards together_ to _Muggles Politics_?

McGonagall saw the question in Harry's eyes or wrinkled his eyebrows and replied, "Yes ... on the new books you can see what it's really about. The author of the first book was enough ... Yes, not so kind to muggers. He tells stories of how The Ministry of magic works together with the prime ministers of the muggers and ... is not so happy about it. The new book, on the other hand, is rewritten and friendlier. More facts, so to say. But because we do not have this now ... "

Harry felt how the chief accused him of blaming him. But that was not his fault! If Malfoy had not started throwing things like dreams and ... and been completely hysterical ... then Harry could have brought the second book!

"You seem out of focus. Maybe we'll take this meeting another time?"

"No! I mean, no, professor. I can handle. What should I do?"

"What you're gonna do, Harry, is reading this book. That's why I thought the new one would be a bit better ... But I think Granger can help you if it gets difficult. It was Albus Dumbledore who wanted you to have it. "

"But why should I get it and come here again?"

"Yes, Harry ... It's very important that you read it. And I want your word personally to read it ... As soon as possible, anyway ... This ..." McGonagall drew a deep breath and stared at the book , as if she meant that just that book would take a long time to read - and understand. "Do I have your word, Harry?"

"I promise." but he grimaceed.

"Good ... Good day, then."

"Good day, the professor."

Harry walked out of the office and jogged back to the living room. It was only half an hour since he had said goodbye to Ron and Hermione, so they could not have gone for dinner yet. He said the password to The Thick Lady and watched the wall clock standing against the wall opposite the portrait hole. The time was only half past two.

"Already ready?" Hermione welcomed him.

"We thought you were on the worst assignment." Ron said, sitting next to the armchair, and therefore had to turn almost a full turn on the chair to look at Harry.

"What's the book?" Harry sat beside Hermione on the couch, who immediately dropped away her own book she read.

"It's about the interaction between the magic ministry and the muggers prime minister. I'll read it."

"It looks old."

"And hard-read." Ron said leaning forward to get a better look at it.

Harry sighed and leaned backwards.


	4. Second dream

**Chapter 4 - Second Dream**

He was left behind, almost felt like being abandoned, deceiving. Why did it feel this way? Why did he care so much?

Draco sat down on the floor and began to pick up the books he lost. He stood with the thighs in his arms and saw a drop falling on the top book.

Great, did he stand and cry? Really? He got angry with himself and threw down the books on the table, as if it were their fault that he felt it like this.

He had to think through everything, get some kind of response. Dreams. It was just dreams, and he had never had a real conversation with Potter. Common. Perhaps that's why he dreamed like that, because he basically wanted to be his friend?

Sure, he thought, as if I did not try it, first grade ...

He thought back the first time they met, at Madam Malkins. They had a nice conversation, thought Draco, so why did not Potter want to be his friend? He decided, at any rate, to stop thinking about it and wiped his eyes. It was so stupid all!

When it was dinner, Gregory Goyle sat next to Draco at Slytherin's table. He did not wonder why he just ate the food, that was something they were used to. Draco did not realize that Goyle did not notice how close he was. Maybe he's always like that, maybe Goyle is just stupid.

"Hi, Draco ..."

He turned around. Pansy Parkinson stood oblivious to him. "Hello?"

"Yes ... I've heard about your dad. I'm so sorry. Is there anything ... I can do for you?"

"Well ... oh ... no ... thank you?"

"I thought ... We're still friends, well? I mean ..." she lowered the voice. "I know you're having trouble. Sorry, I just finished doing that, I should have supported you instead."

"Thanks, Pansy. But it's really not necessary."

"Tell me anyway." She patted him on her shoulder and then went from there.

"What was that about?" asked Goyle who opposed.

"I really have no idea. Minx wants to get me back." he grimaceed unmistakably. Why would he even play so tough for everyone? And especially for Goyle?

"I can do that!" laughed Goyle. "Now that you have inherited and ..."

"SHHHHH!" hushed Draco. "Your idiot! No one knows so shut up!"

"Oh…"

The legacy, yes ... From Draco's secret old fortress. She was one of the richest witches in the entire wizard world. But nobody knew, because she was so anonymous. To hide their billions, the old hag was living in a small cabin, a cabin in the woods ... Why did not she just give away the gold directly?

Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, had in recent years been very nice and lovable to her; invited her to dinner at least once a week. At last she died this summer - the day before Draco's birthday, in fact - and had signed in her contract that the family Malfoy would get everything she owned. Including the cottage. But the Malfoy family, it was left where it stood.

After dinner, Draco did not have to carry out several punishments, but was free at the moment. Instead of accompanying the Slytherin flock down to the basement, he went straight through the iron doors to the school yard. He walked past the fountain and out through the gates. They closed nine so he did not have to think about where he went so far. Instead of moving forward to the open fields and the black lake, he turned to the left and followed the wall. He did not really know where he was heading. He only knew he could not go to his room because he had promised Nott that he would have to be alone with his new girl there after dinner.

Finally, Draco stopped a few hundred meters from the Quidditch Arena. It was enlightened - someone is training there.

He wanted to see him. Wanted as much answers as he could.

A very strange feeling of Draco's stomach when he took the first steps towards the stadium, a feeling he could not really explain. Nervousness, maybe? He would definitely not be excited to spy if it were Gryffindor's team that was training right now.

He walked through the stands between the stands and climbed silently on the first and hid behind a pillar, hoping no one had seen, or should see him.

"Well done, Tom! Take this!"

Pots flew around and threw more thunder against his new battles, who then smashed with clubs. The hunters flew to the other side of the plane and fit the clone between themselves and attempted to score at Ronald Weasley.

"Harry!" Weasley shouted precisely and caught something golden glittering just flew in front of his stomach. Then he threw away the poke and pots began to chase after it.

Draco must admit it - pots were very good at flying. He was smooth, fast and ... good.

He threw himself under one of the benches when Potter flew just over him and crossed. At first, Draco thought he had been discovered, but then Potter flew from there again with his hand raised in the weather with a pair of silver wings stuck out between his fingers. He threw up the twinkle in the air again and continued training his fighters.

Draco went to school and decided to inform everyone in his team that they would have a competition on Sunday. Immediately after dinner. He would play Quidditch again. When he got rid of the prefect mark, he also thought he would automatically lose the position as the team captain of Slytherin's Quidditch team, but McGonagall had said he would continue. For some fun, he would be able to do in his spare time, that's what Dumbledore had done. That old toddler, why was he so kind? He was weak ... maybe because he was dead now?

Later in the evening, Draco had distributed flyers to Nott, Goyle and three others from the lower classes. He told them to hang them up at school so that the Slytherin students could see that it was a competition. He himself hung just outside and one inside the door of the living room, sent an owl to his mother with a letter that she would buy a blurred to him and then went into his room and lay in bed.

He lay there looking up at the ceiling, but was not tired. The time was only half past nine. But he still pulled the veil around the bed and turned his side and blew. For some reason, he began to think of Potter and began to boast of anger. But then when he got up Potter's face in his head ... then he fell asleep.

When he woke up, he had forgotten what he thought of before he fell asleep, and did not remember what he had dreamed. Draco can not sleep for so long because it was still dark outside.

He was thirsty and stood up to go to the bathroom and drink some water. So he walked out the door and discovered that he did not have his clothes anymore except the boxer shorts, and had fallen asleep with his clothes.

 _I must have put them in sleep,_ he thought, _it became hot when I was sleeping._

He went down the stairs to the living room and to the boys' restrooms, went to a sink and started the crane.

"I have been waiting for you."

Draco turned around as soon as the blurred blurred out of the room - except the dull light that came in through the door from the dying fire in the living room - and he saw nothing but the reflection on the shiny stone floor.

"Who's there?" he asked the horror. He had no stick with him, did not even wear a pair of pants.

"But ... guess?"

"I know ..." sighed Draco. "I'm dreaming again."

Torches on the walls lit immediately and pots appeared in the light. He was wearing a pair of regular jeans and a black, tight t-shirt on the upper body. The same clothes he had when they encountered each other in the Diagonal Trend. The black hair was as ruffy as it usually used to be and the glasses were fine and nipped on the nose.

"We have the same dreams." he said, as if he had a bad conscience about not saying it in the library the same day.

"Do you have the same dream I am right now, or do they just resemble each other?" asked Draco.

"I think they're just like each other, but not that we're dreaming exactly the same."

"Okay, you know why?"

"I have no idea, but I'm not telling anyone, either."

"Neither do I." murmured Draco. He lied in his own dream.

"So ... what should we do now?" Potter slowly began to move towards Draco, looking at him from eyes to knees. He smiled a cheeky smile. "You're already ready."

Draco also began to move forward. He knew he could not do anything. And to be honest he liked this. Right now, when he dreamed, as he knew he did. He would certainly regret when he woke up, but it was worth it right now.

Potter put his hand on Draco's shoulder and pulled it down his arm until he reached his waist. Draco gets rid of the soft touch. No one had touched him that way before. He answered the touch by choking Potter's breast with one hand and his back with the other. They looked into each other's eyes all the time - green into silver - leaning close closer to each other's faces.

"Malfoy"

Draco woke up with a jerk. That's how they remember their dreams, being disturbed in the midst of them. And he still felt Potter's creations when he was confused and looked around for the one who had called his name. "Harr ..? ... Who?"

"You have slept all day. Are you good?" It was Goyle who spoke.

"What's good?"

"Are you sick or something?" wondered Zabini.

"What time is it then?" Draco got up on one elbow. He had pain in the whole body.

"It's lunch soon. You've been sleeping almost all day."

 _No! Have I missed all my punishments?_ Draco started thinking and flew right out of bed. _How could I sleep for so long?_ "Why, why did not you wake me up earlier?"

"We thought you were sick ..." muttered Goyle.

"So ..." he noticed that he had his clothes on again and went to the door. "Thank you ..." he wanted it to be angry and sarcastic, but it seemed as if he were really grateful.

And once again he could not stop thinking about the dream, and went through the living room and felt some sort of longing for the black-haired person who visited him almost every night.

...

He told me about the prevail for the president, who did not get angry, but said that if it were to happen, Draco would not even play Quidditch anymore. She had seen the flyers that were everywhere in school, and therefore she used it as a punishment.

"I understand that today you will have the competition. You can have them and train your team as much as you want," said the director. "But next time, you'll have time to find another team captain."

"Thank you, Professor ..." Draco murmured with a lowered head.

He departed from there and was as angry as usual about having to act like a foolish subject to the old aunt.

.

.

.

In the evening, right after dinner, Draco went down to the Quidditch Arena to find out his new team. The broom had arrived in good time, and he had it thrown over his shoulder as if he were the best Quidditch player throughout the ages.

When he arrived, several Slytherine students stood there, and this time none from the first grade, so he did not have to waste any unnecessary time. They all looked up when they saw Draco come walking with their completely brand new Awakening, and just a few months before another, newer model would come out! They admired it with his eyes and Draco was not ashamed of the attention, but sunk in it.

Goyle continued to be a battle man, Montague and Warrington continued as hunters, Draco was the searcher and Bletchley was still the team's guardian. Everything Draco needed to do where to find a new hunter and a batter, then the team would be ready.

"I only need a hunter and a batter." he said loudly to the students who stood around him, most bounced and began to mumble swearing. "So you others, who would try to get something else, may unfortunately leave so I can find two people fast."

Some went, but there were still four people left, one of whom was Pansy Parkinson.

"For real?" Draco moaned her. "I've never seen you ever sit on a broom."

"Why do not you think I'd be fine enough?"

Draco started laughing and the rest of the team laughed with him. "Because you are a girl, it may be a reason."

"The Gryffindor team has girls. And they win over you all the time!" She stormed from there and Draco was still laughing.

A guy named Adrian Peucey, whom Draco was friends with during his third year, could be the last hunter. Then he pointed only to the biggest of the last two who could be the second battleground.

…

They practiced diligently and a bit harder than Potter had exercised his team. But it was necessary, thought Draco, for this year they should win.

.

.

.

The days went by and Draco always tried to fit in training times so that they would always work just before or after Gryffindor. He wanted to see pots, wanted to see him fly. Maybe hit him in the locker room ... But he would never, because all the student homes had their own locker room. He also did not really know why he wanted these volatile meetings with the Gryffindor - but there was nothing he would question.

A week after joining his team, Gryffindor played his first match against Hufflepuff. The week after that, Slytherin would play against Ravenclaw. Because the Slytherin team became complete so far after everyone else, they got to work harder than they have ever done so far. They practiced in the morning, day, evening and weekends. Autumn promise approached, but it also made the first match.

The night before the match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, Draco went out of the dressing room together with his team behind him. Pots still trained Gryffindor in the arena, and they had about three minutes left before they had to leave. Draco sat down on the stands and watched, while his team sat and bowed to Gryffindor and tried to disturb them. But Draco sat quietly, looking at Potter, who flew at the moment.

When Potter saw Draco he increased the speed, as if trying not to make eye contact with him. As if he was afraid to look into his eyes.

When they were done, they went, and Draco had not looked away from Potter once. He does not really know what he was thinking, he just could not look away. It was something that always made him almost as in transit as he watched the Gryffindor.

"Died ..." he said loudly, clapping his hands and getting up. "Then we get started!"

.

.

.

It was only a few minutes left before the sun would appear far, far away in the horizon. The sky was deep blue with springs of gold from the far end. The last stars were extinguished and a light breeze over the school's fields. A few test lines turned out at the woods away at the Forbidden Forest, but backed in again when they saw the man who went straight to them.  
He was tall, tall and straight in the back. The mantle, which was black as the night, flatted easily with the wind the man created by taking such long and fast steps.

He was determined, he knew where to go. The fingers on the right hand touched the inner pocket of the jacket, slammed easily over the patch that lay in it.

 _I'm waiting for Hogsmeade. At sunrise_.

He had read the note so many times that he had not even had to check it one last time before he left off. But it may also have been because there were so few words. So few, yet so much hidden in them.

The man walked past the forest guard cottage, past the pumping, past everything. He just continued to go until he reached the edge of the village. He could not see what he was looking for, but he knew it was close.

He heard someone cry for help. Something had gone wrong, his meeting was not what he had hoped for. Immediately he slipped into action, took out the rod and started running out against the cry.

The cobblestones felt like sharp knife blades under his feet and he discovered that he had no shoes. When he looked down he saw that the pants he wore was far too long, and he tripped over them.

"HELP ME!" he heard someone cry again, this time higher ... more painful.

He got up quickly and started running again, trying not to stumble over his own feet. When he arrived behind a house, he saw someone lying on the ground, on the stomach, trying to creep up with the elbows.

Draco rushed to the man, kneeling next to him, grabbed his waist and gently turned his back.  
"What has happened?" he asked the panic team.

Harry Potter, with blood all the way up to his ears and blue-legged legs, looked up in Draco's face with horror in his eyes.

He did not get a word, so Draco shook him. "Please answer!"

Potter opened his mouth in a silent letter. The glasses were cracked, but Draco could see his own pale, panic-shaped face in them.

He looked up and tried to see if anyone was nearby, someone who could help when he saw it. An old mirror was leaning against a tall fence near some houses. He immediately recognized that mirror, because he had seen it on an image in one book once.

It was the erected mirror, which showed the spectator what he wanted most of all in the world. He saw his mirror image, but he did not see his own face.

In a desperate attempt to prove to himself that it was not a mirror, he raised one hand against his face. The mouth was open, the eyes closed. Red eyes, in a pale face with thin slits to nostrils.


	5. The Invisibility jacket

**Chapter 5 - The invisibility jacket**

The first match against Hufflepuff went as well. Gryffindor led thirty points against zero during the twenty first minutes until Harry closed the captured catch. They won by one hundred and eighty points against zero, and now head over the other student homes.  
Next week, Slytherin will play against Ravenclaw, and that would be a fairly even match. Anyway, anyone can still come across Gryffindor, but since Malfoy got rid of his prefix (as reported), Gryffindor did not get rid of a lot of student home points.

Harry switched into the locker room along with his team when the match was over. They were really happy and Ron had already jumped away to pick up things they would have for the party that would take place in the family room in half an hour.

"Good play, horny! See you later!" Harry walked out the door to meet Hermione and Ginny, who always waited outside the dressing room.

"Congratulations, honey ..." muttered Ginny, smiled, hugged him hard and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "But I did not think anything else either."

"Congratulations, yourself ..."

"Should we go up together? I was going to retrieve my books and then go to the library to study. I will not do it in a room full of screaming Gryffindor students." Hermione said, and began to take some steps towards school. "Sorry, I can not celebrate with you, Harry. But congratulations to you both!"

"I just want to talk to you a little." said Ginny turned to Harry. "See you later, Hermione."

"See you." Harry took Ginny's hand and she brought him a little away from the locker room's door. "What do you want to talk about?" he asked a little underestimated. He knew he had been unconcentrated on the match, and that's why Ginny wanted to talk to him.

"Yes ... you can tell me why you seemed so gone." she said with a slight mouth. She was just worried.

"You know why I'm terribly strange. Even though it's over, I know it's only temporary. I have to keep an eye on ..."

"All the professors are following you everywhere, Harry. You have to start relaxing."

"I know ..." he sighed. "But it's programmed in some way. I've always been looking for something different, I just can not stop." The lies did not sweat longer, Harry discovered; It had started to be much easier now to pretend he was only afraid.

"You must ..." sucked Ginny and leaned forward so that her head rested against his chest. "Please. For my sake."

Harry understood that she was joining him. But what he did not dare tell was that he did not look for any dead seas at all. It was Malfoy. Without thinking about it, he looked around all the time because he was looking for Malfoy. He had begun to worry that the Slytherin life always seemed to follow him, spying on him as the teachers of the school did. That was something he was doing. Something he knew.

In the library he had mentioned something about his dreams he had had all summer. Could it be the same dreams Harry had? But why would Malfoy want to follow him so much? Harry just tried to ignore everything, almost hiding from Malfoy. There must be something else he's dealing with, and Harry needs to find out what.

"Ginny ... I promise I'll try to relax a little. Try." But I can not promise I'll be fine in just a few hours. "

"I know. Tonight we're going to celebrate the victory, and tomorrow we'll do some homework together." She grabbed his hand again and went together to school.

…

The twins Daniel and Thomas Wibbly had learned something from their older brother who immediately started the party after ten in the evening, when the students had gone to bed from the fourth grade and down.

"Then you just say 'alcoholum maxima' to get any drink of alcohol. So we never have to get any older people to buy a fire whiskey for us!"

"But you're only fourteen years old!" Ginny said angry to them. "Go to bed instead, or I'll get Professor McGonagall."

Tom and Dan went to the boys' dorms, and after half an hour they also disappeared from the fifth grade and some from the sixth.

"So ... shall we try that alcoholic thing, or?" said Ron shut down, after all the creams he had eaten. After a sour mine from Ginny he said loudly: "I am an author." and shrugged his shoulders.

Hermione came back and Ginny immediately whispered to her.

"You know it's forbidden to drink alcohol at a school, huh?" she said with her hands on the sides. "I'm going to lay down, and I find out that one of you has been drinking tonight and I'll tell McGonagall. And do not think you'll get away with just a few punishments."

Ginny nodded and followed Hermione with the girls' dorms.

Now almost only seventh grade students remained, so Ron decided to pour some alcohol into his pumpkin juice. "What she does not know, she does not suffer."

Kenneth Towler, the only guy left that was from the sixth grade, rose from a couch and went to Harry. "My big sister taught me how to get rid of backfill so no one will find out."

"But ... they will wake up if they hear we're too messy." mumbled Harry, but who was a little crazy for pumpkin juice with alcohol himself.

"I know a place ..." whispered Ron.

…

Without being discovered, the remainder of the pupils reached out to the whipping arrow tree outside the school area. They were about twenty, but they smiled so quietly through the castle that even the ghosts noticed them.

"The ghostly cottage?" Harry wondered at Ron when he got a stick to slide through the air to the tub in the tree so it became quite quiet.

"Come on, Harry!" said Ron smoothly. "Something stupid we must remember from our time at Hogwarts."

They looked at each other laughing at old memories.

Surprisingly many people already knew how to get a regular drink to get alcoholic, refill or copy the bottles so they became more. Very many bottles drank Harry himself.

They had a fun evening with a lot of noise and noise in the bedroom in the ghostly cottage. They found their own games, many of the students began to get romantic with each other and Demelza Robbins dared to Harry under the influence of the alcohol.

"Do you think it's fun?" she wondered and sat beside him on the floor, where they sat in a ring of candles in the middle.

"Yes and you?" asked Harry, who would not be cruel.

She threw her black, shiny hair and waved her long eyelashes. "As long as I spend time with you, it's fun."

"Demelza ... listen here ..."

"Harry!" Harry turned around and saw Ron stand and jump on the bed to make the dust work. "Surely I've been lying in this bed with a broken foot?"

Harry did not know if it was secret information, but still annoyed.

"There you see!"

Neville lay in a corner of the room with Seamus's head on his knees, Dean sat and kissed with a girl from the sixth grade that Harry did not know the name of ...

More did not remember Harry of the evening, but he woke up in his own bed. Kenneth entered the room and woke everyone, he did not share bedrooms with them because he went sixth. "Here ..." he said quietly to Harry. He handed a beaker with some transparent drink in.

"Water?" wondered Harry, who did not understand why he would be so kind.

"Backfill extract. I told you I knew how to get rid of the headache and the sickness."

"Well ... thanks, how nice." Harry drank everything and immediately felt how much he could do. It did not taste bad, but it would not be something he would be used to drinking.

"Do you remember something from yesterday?" wondered Ron.

Kenneth put out the beaker with the transparent drink on the tables of the others in the room before he left.

"Not much. Just i went earlier than you. But I do not remember how I came back here."

Ron sat down in bed and headed for his head. "Kenneth is a shit guy, how is it that we have not hung up with him before? "

Harry shrugged his shoulders and sat up too. The others in the bedroom started dressing to go down to breakfast. "Not a word to the girls, ok?" said Harry as they walked out the door.

"Well ... Hermione would be crazy." said Ron.

"We would be relegated." whispered Dean.

"Grandmother would kill me ..." murmured Neville sadly.

"Why would she kill you, Neville?" Hermione stood under the stairs with his arms crossed. She probably expected that the boys would come down.

A silence arose as they stood on each step and stared at her.

"Neville's wand is gone again." Harry said quickly. "We can not find it somewhere."

"Oh ..." muttered Hermione. "Is it yours?" She drew a magic wand out of her pocket.

"Oh ... yes, there it is. What a trip." Neville said in a pretentious tone. But he seemed happy at the same time, because it was indeed his magic wand - it was indeed a miraculous coincidence.

"It lay between the couches. Keep it closer." she said and gave it to him again. "So what happened yesterday?" she then asked, looking closely at Harry and Ron. Especially Ron.

The others apologized and hurried out through the portraits.

"Nothing special. We sat up and talked and then we went to bed." said Ron, Harry felt that a cry was over and over again.

Ginny entered the living room. She had probably eaten breakfast yet, but Harry hurried up to her and pulled her through the gateway again. "Good morning!" he said and kissed her. "Have you eaten?"

"Yes, sorry I did not wait for you. But I can go with you anyway. Why are we in a hurry?"

"Hermione and Ron will be angry again."

Ginny nodded and said nothing more.

…

During breakfast Harry began to remember more and more from yesterday. Some things did not even know him if it was reality or if he had dreamed ... Many things he hoped he'd dreamed.

What he thought was real was that he jumped on the bed with Kenneth, almost tore down the whole cabin after a duel with Neville, sat on the floor and told Ron how much he meant to him and that he is Harry's best friend in the world ...

The things he hoped for had been dreams every time he remembered some moments from when he started going back to the bedroom. He had encountered Malfoy for some reason. They had broken and pulled the magic wanders, but Harry had been too drunk to keep it right. Then they had talked and walked together for the stairs. Malfoy had followed all the way to the portrait hole under Harry's mantle and then Malfoy had disappeared to the basement again, with Harry's mantle.

He knew he would start looking for it before the lessons started ... to be sure. But he still hoped that it had just been a dream.

…

He jumped up the stairs on the way to Gryffindor's tower. Ginny remained behind the last stairway and waited, they were in the same class now. He continued to run further through the port of call after saying the password and straight up to the dormitory.

"What are you looking for?"

The hall was in a single chaos; clothes lay scattered on the floor together with school books, feather pins and ink horns; the bedding had holes in noise on the beds; all the drawers in Harry's nightstand table were pulled out and his suitcase lay on the side of the floor.

He turned around where he sat on the floor with his back against Ron, who entered the door to the dormitory. "My invisibility jacket ... I can not find it ..." Harry replied frustrated and stomached to slide under the bed.

"Well ... it's invisible ..." mumbled Ron, Harry would have tapped his eyes in him if he had not lay half the body under the bed.

"I know ..." he muttered. "Do not you go and show yourself to Hermione, instead? Assume you just want to hide her."

"I have my tricks when it comes to Hermione. Only you cling her to the cheek and come close to my face and ..."

"I do not want to hear what you're doing with your girlfriend, Ron!"

What would he do now? What if he had really lent his coat to Malfoy? What if he did not mind giving it back?

Harry saw Ron's feet walking past the bed on his own bed, he also lay on the stomach to crawl around the floor and feel like some fabric. "Where did you last?"

"I do not remember." Harry crawled backwards and sat down on the floor. The dam began to irritate his nose. "At least I came back here without being discovered, and I'm almost completely sure I brought it up here."

"Maybe it's down there?"

"I'll look!" Harry jumped up and ran down the stairs to the living room, of course it could be in a couch! But ... would not Hermione have found it then? If she had already found Neville's magic wand between the couches.

Harry stood in the middle of the room and swore and stamped in the floor.

"It's not good, huh?" asked Ginny. She stood by the gateway. "What were you looking for, now again?"

"Nothing special ... We go to the classroom now, huh?"

More and more Harry worried about where his invisibility jacket could be. Not only because a Slytherin could have it in his claws, but also that he had not been without it - or did not know where it was - since he received it on Christmas Eve's first year at Hogwarts.

When he and Ginny arrived at the library in the afternoon, they were met directly by Mr Norris, the guardian Filch's cat. She stared straight into their eyes with her big yellow.

"What do you want?" Ginny said annoyed and went straight to her so she had to go aside. "It's in the middle of the day, so what do you really watch?"

Harry just followed Ginny.

…

It started raining just after lunch on the hollow hour. The drops smattered against the tall windows of the library, and clouds from thunder were heard at a long distance. Pupils - both from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw - quietly hissed Harry as they passed by gratifying him and Ginny for the win.

She put her notebook together and put it down, the pencil and the ink horn in the bag. "Should we go down and sit outside the classroom? I'm bored."

Harry recalled the book he had borrowed from McGonagall - as yet he could not read an entire page yet and understood - and put it in his own bag.

As they walked down the stairs to the grand hall, Harry began to think again where his invisibility jacket could be. Hopefully, he'd just forgotten it in the ghostly cottage, and only realized that he was wearing it when he returned to the castle.

His thoughts were disturbed once more by the Slytherin students. "Weasley! I already knew you're poor, but your parents could not even get you a pair of shoes, I can not understand!" Pansy Parkinson's gang of girls laughed at Pansy's commentary.

Harry looked down on Ginny's shoes and then began to boast of anger. Ginny, who was much more tolerant of such, did not even look at her own shoes but just said to Harry, quite loudly; "Had Parkinson been as intelligent as I could, she could have done something about her appearance with her magic wand, or why not a polyjuice mixer. No wonder in the world could fix that nose."

Harry frustrated when laughing past the confused Parkinson with his gang behind him.  
"I did not know you could be so bad." said Harry, but laughed great when they sat outside the classroom down the basement. Hermione and Ron were already there and hugged.

"Was Parkinson?" asked Hermione and turned away from Ron. "She has already commented on my hair and Ron's schoolgown today - which you should actually do something about Ron. The pants are too short. I did not even know you were still growing."

"I thought we had a nice time here." he snatched and walked away a meter.

"Oh ... you know what I mean. Stop taking it all so personal all the time."

"The day you stop chasing me."

"Hack? What do you mean by it! I'm just trying to help ..."

"You do not help anyone by being mad!" Ron leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.

"I'm not trying to be mean, Ron!" Hermione said with tears in his eyes. Harry understood that she was tired of fussing all the time.

"Exactly, you do not even have to try."

Hermione raised his bag from the source floor and rushed off the corridor.

"I'm following her." Ginny sighed with an appealing look at his brother and ran after Hermione.

"You see - absolutely unnecessary! And yet she continues. I can not cry because I can not afford new clothes. She knows I do not have money, and yet she stays. " Ron sat down next to Harry on the floor. "Why can not she just love me like who I am? Maybe she's better with someone richer ... and smarter ..."

"It's you she loves." Harry answered and looked down on the floor in front of him. "Hermione only has her way of being on. Her way to help. She never understands that when she corrects someone, someone says what it should and should not do, talking about when someone's clothes should be replaced, she hurts her. just trying to show she cares. "

"I know ... but it feels like I'll never get used to it. It seems like you've already done it, and do not care if she's like that."

"I'm also annoyed at times." Harry pointed out. "But that's the way she is."

"I should look for her. You notice if she has forgiven me - when Ginny comes back alone."

"Good luck."

Harry sat alone on the floor while waiting for some of Ginny, Hermione and Ron to come back. It was half an hour left until the lesson started and after about five minutes he heard the steps in the corridor and looked up from the book McGonagall had borrowed him.  
But it was none of the ones he was expecting.

Of course it was Malfoy.

Gryffindor and Slytherin had the magic art collection together, which is why he was on his way. Harry quickly looked back into his book again, while cold cries spread out like shivering along the entire back. Malfoy had already seen him, but proceeded to the corridor as nothing. And to get even worse, Harry noticed that he looked up and leaned against the corresponding wall, just in front of Harry. He dropped down on the floor and stared only.  
Harry peered through the lug and saw that Malfoy looked at him with something challenging, or he was just angry.


	6. Love drink

**Chapter 6 - Love Drink**

Closing Potter did not continue to ignore him, but sighed, leaned back and looked inquiring - but exhausted-into Draco's eyes. Draco raised his eyebrows with a cheeky smile.

"What do you want now?" shredded pots

"Oh, no nothing special." Draco said remarkably. "You seem busy, even a little annoyed."

"You're blowing. Something you must want. So, go ahead." Draco saw how the heart dumped in the pit of the potter, breathing fast.

They were completely lonely in the corridor when he looked in both directions, Potter would be an easy match in case a duel would be broken. Draco laughed at. "Think so much nicer you're when you're full." Potter sharked with locked eyes. "But I guess it's over. I'll go to visit the office of the director, that's something she should know about you." Draco started to get up.

"Wait!" shouted Pots and stretched out a hand. Even he was about to get up, maybe even ready to run if the Slytherin life had been fast enough.

Draco bites into the lower lip of oppressed joy. He loved this - to have control. He had something that Potter owned, something special, and he was not going to give it up so easily.

"Just give it to me, Malfoy." the Gryffindor whispered and looked around so no one would see.

"What do you say?"

It welcomed him, but Potter took a deep breath and wept: "Please ..."

Draco, who began to get bored, put his arms in cross. "I did not hear that."

"Please ..." repeated pots, a bit higher.

"Mmmmmmmm ... well. I think I'll keep it."

Draco stood up, as well as Potter who drew the magic wand. "I do not have time for any games!"

"It's really important to you, right?" I understand it's unusual, I was able to analyze it thoroughly. Unusual ... valuable ... Not true? " Potter did not answer but shook just a little on the wand to show he meant seriousness.

Pupils started flowing into the corridor from both sides, with Professor Slughorn in the lead on the left.

"Such a shame." murmured Draco mocked. "But anyway, I do not have it with me, you can have it tonight."

"Location and time." whispered pots ordered.

"I send a note to the lesson when I get back."

"Good."

Draco sat in the back of the classroom waiting for Goyle to come in. He saw Potter and his three friends sitting on the benches in front of him.

"Shall we not go further?" heard Draco singer Granger say over the sorrow of the classmates' voices and the sound of chairs that scratched the floor.

"It will be fine here." just said Potter firmly and sat down in front of Draco. He wanted to be as close as possible when the patch came.

Slughorn was at the front of the classroom and started writing on the board. Pots snapped back towards Draco. His eyes looked sharp and alert, but at the same time worried. Draco leaned back in the chair with his arms crossed and a happy muffler.

The lesson ended and no note was written yet. Draco was first out with Goyle behind him. He told him to go up to the entrance hall and wait for him there (the next lesson would be in the greenhouse together with the Ravenclaw students) while he went to the opposite direction to Slytherin's lounge.

He walked and smiled a little to himself right up to the corner and stood behind the corner. Soon pots would come jumping, he was sure. Just as he expected, he heard steps that came closer to the steps of the crowd that went elsewhere towards the stairs that led a floor. Potter turned out and crossed when he saw Draco standing and wondering behind the corner.

"Will you give me it or not? I guess that's why you went here waiting for me."

"Potter ... can you honestly answer one thing?"

Pots tightened their jaws and looked up in the ceiling. He blew hard and answered "What?" Before he sighed and looked straight at Draco again.

"Why do you think I'll give it back?" I know I just borrowed it, but ... you let me take it away from you and go back to the basement. Why? "

"You start to go on my nerves! Give me my robe!"

Draco stood stubbornly without a mine in the face.

"Okay." said Potter. "I do not know why I gave it to you. I was drunk, right? You obviously lose mind when you've been drinking."

"No matter, you owe me pots. Big."

"What are you thinking about?"

"I've saved the skin twice on you. Yesterday, and when those snappers went home to my house a few months ago."

"Do not forget the times I've saved the skin on you, Malfoy. An example is when you almost burned up." Potter dared, he began to become impatient.

Draco looked down into the ground. They had saved life on each other so many times before. After the war, everything had changed, except just what they were for each other. Enemies. He thought they had left all that behind him, but at the same time he realized that Potter still disliked him - after all, that was Draco who had started everything again. Both in Diagong River and when they just got to school.

"In any case, I think we have become too old for this." Then he said, looking straight at the pots that now frowned the forehead. He was not quite aware that he said it loudly, but now he could not just take it back. "I know we have never come across anything but now, when everything is over then ... oh!"

Draco did not hurry to stay there, he felt how he became emotional. A strange side he had never seen before himself. He pulled the thin jacket out of his inner pocket on his school uniform and threw it over to Potter (capitulation - another side that had never been shown). Then he only went from there to the entrance hall where Goyle waited.

"Did you forget any book?" he asked.

"Do not be ridiculous." Draco just mumbled and continued to school.

.

.

.

Slytherin would play his first match for the season against Ravenclaw. The team had eaten breakfast and was now in the dressing room and waited for the plan to go out.

"Do not you hold any kind of speech, or ..?" asked Warrington.

"Well ..." drew Draco just and looked at the door. He half hung over his knees, half leaning against the wall.

"Do not you sleep tonight?" wondered Peucey.

"But do not worry." Draco stood at the door just staring at it.

He does not know what he was thinking about, he just felt so down. So weak, empty ... He was no longer the one he had always been. The rich boy from a nice family, with a father who was a member of the school board, the one that most of Slytherin looked up to. The girls from the student home were still hacking and doing everything to be seen. So he was still popular, yet everything felt so ... changed. He did not even want to play, even though he knew they could win the match.

"... those from Slytherin's team!" shouted the commentary on the plane.

"Then ..." he whispered and the voice broke and opened the door.

As he sat up on his broom and looked out over the plane, he tried to think more about why he felt like he did, instead of looking for the twist. Could it have been that night when Potter lent his robe? Sure, was it a weird event ... But it may still not affect his mood one week after?

~ Draco had woken up in the middle of the night because the stomach cured persistently. It was a long time since he had eaten something, so he was bully. He got out of bed and dressed up in jogging pants and monk jacket, then he walked out of the bedroom towards the living room. He thought that there might be some pastries or some candy that had come out.

A little creature slipped around in the living room and picked up old pieces of paper and broken feathers and put them in a bag. It was a grandfather.

"Do you find something edible?" asked Draco, half sarcastically, half hopefully.

"Oh, sir, forgive me ..." the algae bowed so deeply that his nose rubbed the floor. "It was not my intention to wake you up."

"Do not worry. Food?"

The algae just stared at him with open mouth. "Sir, is your lord hungry?" Then he peeps.

"Very." Draco was on his way back to the bedroom again.

"Sir ... Please, let me run to the kitchen and get something for you!"

"Yes, sure. Why not." Draco sat in a high armchair in front of the dying fire. The alien disappeared with his fingers.

After ten minutes, Draco was tired of sitting and waiting. He knew about where the kitchen was low, as it was on the same level as Slytherin's lounge, so he went out to the corridor to look for it. But after walking around the ground floor without finding any visible or invisible doors, he gave up and was on his way back.

"So." Draco turned around and saw the Bloody Baron, Slytherin's house ghost. "What are you up your bed, Mr. Malfoy?"

"I was looking for the kitchen."

"Come here. We go to the headmaster."

After a long reprint of McGonagall - Draco explained that he was very hungry that a house elf had promised to retrieve food but never came back and went around to find out the kitchen himself - he was sent to the basement again by fifty points deducted from Slytherin. She had really thought of calling Slughorn, who was the director of Slytherin so that he could follow Draco back, but she was too tired and swore expensive and holy that if someone came on him to stay out of bed more tonight she would relegate him to the spot.

Draco gave up and went downstairs, how hungry he was. But when he was on the last steps in the entrance hall, he saw the big e-mail automatically sliding up and closing. He could hear lacking in rhythm steps through the hall. Draco pulled the stick out of his pocket on the jogging pants and just thought to light it when it hurled into something, or someone who was invisible.

"Ouch!" and thunder.

"Who there! Lumos!" but Draco did not see anything.

He felt his hand in front of him and grabbed some kind of cloth and pulled it in. Potter turned out. He had been wearing the invisibility jacket he had when he spied on Draco in the cabin on the Hogwartsexpress two years ago. Potter stood on unstable legs and also drew his spell. They stood and looked at each other for a while. Draco's brow shone and Potter's eyes that could not focus.

Draco immediately became aware that he stood there with shabby clothes and fluffy hair, and was embarrassed. "Expelliarmus ..." he said uncertainly. Pots dropped the rod and it flew straight into Draco's hand. "Potter ... are you drunk?"

Draco started laughing low. It did not matter how he looked. Pots did not seem aware of what happened to him anyway.

"Give me the stick." he just mumbled.

"You're drunk, right? And you tried to go undiscovered back to the Gryffindor tower. Where do you have your friends? Or do you drink your own night out in the school area? "

Draco understood how pathetic it sounded, but maybe the great hero had finally collapsed?

"Where ... my ... me ... huh?"

Draco backed a step to go to the basement. "Good luck ..."

A cat's meowing echoed through the empty castle. Mrs Norris was on his way.

Draco stopped thinking. He picked up the invisibility jacket from the floor and threw it over. He handed his hand and examined it for a while - it was completely invisible. The cat meowed again. He ran to Potter who was laying on the floor again and pulling him on his feet. Then he threw his coat over him too. He had never been so close to Potter before, except the time they flew on a broom together through the needy room.

"Shut up, ok? Mrs Norris and Filch are coming." Draco slipped into Potter's ear.

"What are you doing?" said Potter, and it seemed like he was crying a little bit.

"Just be quiet. Come on." he said, throwing Potter's arm over his shoulder.

Draco led the Gryffindor up for several stairs and through many corridors. They went very uninspired because Potter constantly lost the balance and was a few decimeters shorter than Draco. Potter tried to point out the fastest roads, but most turned out to be deadlines.  
Finally they came to the Gryffindor tower and stopped in front of a big portrait of a fat ass that slept deeply.

"Are you sure it's here?"

"Yes." bumped pots. "Listen, wake up ..." he said a little higher to the aunt in the portrait.

She yelled loudly without opening her eyes. "Password?"

"Oh ... Courageous ... ohh, harsh courage."

The portrait turned into the wall and a rest room appeared - Gryffindor's living room. Draco looked in quickly to see what it looked like. "Slytherin's living room is much nicer. This looks rather like a perfect place for a bunch of aunts on the sewing circle."

"Thanks for the help. But how are you coming back?" asked Potter who could barely stand still.

"I do not know. I'll run well, I guess." answered Draco.

He could not understand how he could go all this way to help a Gryffindor, especially the one he hated most of them all.

"Take the robe, return it tomorrow." Potter stretched over the robe to Draco.

"Are you sure?" He thought it felt like there was a catch.

"Take it. Leave it tomorrow." Then Potter went in and the portrait turned back into place.

The next day, Draco felt quite well at ease. He thought nothing special, just that everything had been strange. But maybe Potter was really nicer than he seemed? Perhaps they would stop barking all the time? And maybe the dreams would finally end ...

Draco was looking for pots outside the magic hall, and he had already forgotten everything from the night before. ~

Draco still flew over the quidditch plan and pretended to look for the wings. The two hunters flew under him, raging about the clone, while the battles smashed against them. He looked at the scoreboard and saw that Ravenclaw scored twenty points against Slytherin's ten. He became more intense looking for the twist and looked around for it.

Ravenclaws seeker - Padma Patil, who had also chosen to go for a year at Hogwarts - also seemed to have no idea where it was somewhere.

Draco caught the whip before her and Slytherin won by one hundred and fifty points against thirty. It was just pure luck that he got it first because Patil had chased it against him so that it flew straight into his hand while he was just sitting there waiting.

There was a small event in Slytherin's lounge that evening. Obviously, the students turned redundant - no matter how old they were - without anyone getting a teacher or the like. Draco drank nothing, he really did not like it, but lay in bed early.

.

.

.

December came with the worst snow weather for several years. Almost no student showed up in the school area except the day when some went to Hogsmeade.

The day before the fifth of December, when the Christmas promise began and everyone went home to celebrate Christmas with their families, rector McGonagall went to the dining room in the morning and wrote on a list of who would stay at school. Draco would go home to his mother over Christmas, because he knew there would be a lot to do at school during the promise. Tomorrow morning he would take the train back to London, but first, Slytherin would have a double hour in magic drink together with Gryffindor.

Draco usually sat at the back with Goyle, and Theodor Nott, who now began to hang out for them more and more. Before that he had been best friend with Blaise Zabini, but apparently they had violated a girl they both wanted. So pathetic. Draco already knew it was him she wanted.

For several weeks she had actually tried to make him eat homemade cakes and sweets she had done, of course he understood that they must be filled with love drinks. But he did not let her know. In fact, he did not even know her name.

At the end of the lesson together with the Gryffindor students he managed to bring a small bottle of love drink that had been their task that lesson.

"Because love is something we all must have," Slughorn said, "But keep in mind that it's strictly forbidden to give the drink to any student at school."

Draco did not intend to give the drink to anyone, but he had a small collection of all the drinks he had done at home in his own room.

To make it work so that the victim falls in love with him only - and not in the first victim looking after it - you had to wake it in some way. There were two different enchantments; one was so that the victim would fall in love; the other was that he or she only felt passion for the person who made the drink.

Draco chose to do the other because he already had a love drink in his collection.

…

In the evening Draco went alone to the dining room after the last lesson, which was Astronomy that had been in the highest tower. Goyle was sick and had gone home one day earlier while Nott was following another girl he was looking for as being one year younger, but was in the same class as them.

When Draco was on the third floor he could hear voices down in the entrance hall and looked down. It was Potter and his two friends who went down there. He leaned over the railing and felt how something fell down on the floor from his chest pocket - it was the bottle! It bounced on the floor at his feet, slid between the posts on the railing and collapsed on the ledge below him. At just the same moment, Potter had stayed under him, stretched himself and yelled his face upwards.

All glass platters remained on the floor below, while the drink slowly ran the opposite edge of the ledge two floors below Draco. He watched how the drink started dripping down, and some drops ended up in Potter's mouth.

Draco became as a founder, then panicked. What would he do now? He jumped back one step and thought to hide, now it was running.


	7. Limits

**Chapter 7 – Limits**

Harry looked forward to the forthcoming promise. He had missed the crowd, Weasley's family, even though he spent all spring and summer there. It must have been after all that has happened in the past year ... Now he had no home other than the Burrow and Hogwarts, so now there was nothing he would have anxiety about either. The Dursley family would probably never meet him again - well, well - except that the cousin Dudley had seemed to be nicer on the day they were seen last. Maybe Harry missed him a bit, anyway.

He walked between Ron and Hermione heading towards the Gryffindor tower after an early dinner. They would get up and pack, for tomorrow they would go down to Hogsmeade and then transfer to the small town near Weasley's house.

"We can also greet Luna some day." Harry said when they reached the entrance hall. "Neville and his grandmother are supposed to be there on the midday days."

"Of course!" said Hermione.

"I have to say that Mom said Lovegoods would have Christmas lunch with us." Ron said little preoccupied.

The lesson before dinner had been transformation with Professor McGonagall. Even though Harry, Ron and Hermione went the seventh year, the students had been divided into two groups; Those who would have taken the N.E.W.T exams last year and those who would take it this year, those who were one year younger. So, therefore, Harry's annual course gave even more difficult tasks - and that's why the three friends were so exhausted tonight.

"It will be nice to get to bed ..." Harry said and stopped. He had such a desire to just stretch and yawn. He shrugged - something had slipped into his mouth from a floor above.

"What was that?" asked Hermione with tense nostrils; she had seen it.

"It was certainly Peeves." Ron said, looking up, trying to find the source of the fluid.

"We have to go to the hospital flight immediately." Hermione grabbed his sleeve on Harry's robe and pulled him against the stairs. "How does it taste?"

"What does it matter?" asked Ron, he looked quite unhappy.

"If Harry suddenly fainted, Madam Pomfrey must get a little hum about what it was!"

"It tastes ..." Harry smacked. Even though his first reaction had been spitting on the floor, he had swallowed a part. "Apples."

"Could not it just be apple juice?"

"Do not be silly, Ron. Who pours apple juice from a slice straight into someone's mouth?" hissed Hermione.

But Harry stopped listening to Ron's and Hermione's quibble. A strange heat began to spread from the stomach down to his knees, his jaws relaxed slightly and the steps he took became more self-assured. No matter what Hermione came up with for theories, he was no longer afraid.

"How are you?" just asked Ron.

They had just come up for a stairway when Harry stopped. He felt such courage, self-assurance, but he did not know what he would do about it. And the thoughts he had ... that's something he did not want to share. "I'm absolutely sure it was just apple juice." replied Harry. "I'm fine, it's okay."

"But we should still ..."

"I'm fine, Hermione. Certainly. Go ahead, you. I'll look for Ginny."

"Come on. Stop worrying all the time." Ron took Hermione's hand and they went up the stairs.

Harry could not understand that they fell for it - Hermione if someone would have broken in other cases - but something in his voice had persuaded them. These strange feelings that were now bubbling within him were boiling over. It felt like he was dreaming, and he knew exactly why he thought so. Because it was exactly like this he had known in his latest dreams. And he knew who he wanted to find out, but it was not Ginny.

But before Harry had figured out how to find this person, he heard Hermione's voice from the floor above. "You did WHAT?"

Harry took two steps at a time against her voice.

"I did not say that, I tried to stop it." There was the voice he wanted to hear most of all.

"Harry, stay away." Ron knocked at his side as he got up and stretched a protective arm in front of him, so he could not go any further.

"Pots, I apologize so much, I did not mean to ..."

"Do not worry." Harry fluttered stupidly.

"You're sick." said Ron with disgust.

Malfoy, who stood before the three with pronounced facial expression, backed a few steps with outstretched hands. "I swear by my mother's grave, I dropped the bottle and it broke. You can see the split on the floor below us."

"So the drink just ran into Harry's mouth?" asked Hermione angry.

"Do you listen to yourself when you talk, Granger?"

"Watch yourself!" mourned Ron.

"I mean ..." Malfoy pulled his blonde hair backward, away from his forehead and eyes. Harry just stared at his sweaty forehead. "Why would I like _that_ to happen!" He pointed to Harry.

"There is something in it." said Ron.

"But on the other hand, you walked around with a forbidden bottle in your pocket. What would you do with it from the beginning?"

"We do not have to do that, Hermione." Harry said calmly. "Right ... Draco?"

Malfoy blocked his eyes. "Oh ..." he saw from Harry to Hermione. "Not really." Then he quickly went down the stairs and ran almost through the entrance hall towards the basement.

Ron and Hermione discussed high with each other all the way up to the hospital wing. They said things like "Malfoy is not wise", "Going around with forbidden drinks in your pocket", "Imagine if we had not been there" and "Lucky it was just a love drink, and nothing poisonous."

"Just?" said Ron neglected. "There's nothing to scream about! It's sick!"

"But he could as well have killed him."

"Had we not been able to stop Harry, I swore that he would have liked me to kill him."

The explanation for Harry's behavior to Madam Pomfrey may be that a girl from the same student home had given him candy with love drink in, and then he was cured.

Nobody said anything on the way back to the Gryffindor tower. Ron and Hermione thought the whole situation was embarrassing for Harry, and did not want to pull it up if he were to be embarrassed. Harry did not know what he felt. Generated, yes. But he did not think it felt like he had been completely cured either. The thoughts were left, and he liked them. The dreams were recorded in his memory, clearer than before. It was as if the drink had forced something long hidden, which he had not dared to admit to himself.

A whining for his belly. Butterflies? He dared not even smile near his friends.

Hermione went straight to his room and Harry and Ron to theirs. Neville, Seamus and Dean were also packing.

After an hour they were all ready and lay in bed, they were just as tired of all. Harry lay awake and looked up in the bedside sky and listened to when his roommates, one by one, began to sneak or breathe deeply.

He did not want to be confused anymore.

It was only half past nine and Harry decided to go up to the owl tower. He quickly grabbed a school owl and gave it a letter, then he sent it out through the window. He sat on the floor waiting for fifteen minutes before he opened the door, went down for all the stairs and shut down down the stairs down to the basement.

"Come on, come on, come on ..." he whispered and jumped a little lightly into the place. He took three quick breaths and then went down.

The long corridor was slightly illuminated by torches hanging along the walls. It was cold, but Harry still felt very hot. When he reached the corner he suddenly became intensely aware of how nervous he was. But he was not nervous about what he would say, but what he would do if the person he had attracted there would not appear.

But Malfoy stood there at the door outside the classroom where they had magic art together. He looked up when he saw Harry, looked quite scared himself. Harry stayed a few meters from Malfoy. They looked at each other but said nothing.

It seemed like there was a wall between them, a barrier that slowly penetrated Harry's throat and lungs. He could not breathe normally or talk. He just stood there.

Malfoy broke the silence. "Do it then." He shrugged. "I give up."

"What?"

"You came here to kill me." His eyes were shiny, tired. "It seemed a bit illogical that you sent a note about it, but just do it. I do not care anymore. I just want to quit all this."

"I did not come to kill you." Harry said after a while. He tried to relax in the face muscles, he must have looked angry when he went to Malfoy.

"So ... what is it you want? You got your coat back. If your spell is gone, I can not help you. I do not have it."

"It's not the one it's about either."

Malfoy lifted his arms to the sides and let them fall down again. "So?"

"I want to talk about the dreams."

The blonde surprised his eyes. They shone in the frown of light from a torch near him.

Harry continued. "I think we can have the same dreams. Not the same, but the same."

"What are you talking about? Will we tell each other what we dreamed tonight, or what?"

"I mean these special dreams. You talked to the library. Just answer honestly now, do you know who I'm talking about?"

"You are ... You ..!" Malfoy walked around a lap with his hands wandering around, as though he did not really know what he would do of them. "Did you come down here ... to talk about ... dreams!" he stopped, backed up, walked one step and then sideways. Harry saw that he was as confused as Harry felt, but he did everything in his power to keep calm.

"Now it's going to bear or burst ..." mumbled Harry, but again he became speechless.

Malfoy said nothing. He waited for Harry to tell his dreams. None of them seemed to be the first to pick it up if any of them were wrong.

"I usually dream about ..." quietly. Malfoy looked at Harry, as if he did not want him to say something, as if it were a secret that was being played. "I dream about ... I ..." but he really could not say that.

So instead, he took three long steps to the Slytherin, stood on his toes, put one hand on Malfoy's neck and pulled his face to his own. Before Malfoy reacted, Harry had grabbed his arm with his free and held him firmly. Harry's lips rubbed Malfoys, and he kissed him. A quick but definite kiss, then freed Malfoy from his grip.

He took a step back and blasted the mistrust of Harry, who now played the whole event over and over again, very quickly, until he realized what he had actually done. In a fraction of a second, Harry thought to take the flight, but he remained as a star of the same place where he was left.

"Not a second too early." said Malfoy, opened the door to the empty classroom and stepped in. "Will you ever come?"

..

Minutes lasted for hours and soon two o'clock at night. The castle was empty and quiet, no one had been heard down in the basement since the nine-thirties. But it did not matter, the door was properly locked with several enchantments Harry had thrown over it, as he learned from Hermione while they were looking for horror jokes a few months ago.

They lay next to each other, Harry and Draco, on an old coat on the floor, quite quiet. One; the hero of the world and savior, and the other; death eater. None of them dared break the silence, they did not want to return to reality. The whole situation was so crushed, twisted.  
Harry lay on his back with his head on Draco's right arm and looked up in the ceiling that was lit by the moonlight outside the tall windows. His lover drew a deep breath as if he were going to say something, but then breathed out.

Harry solidified, but then relaxed and turned to the side so he could look at the blond man next to him. Draco just stared up in the roof with tense jaws. His otherwise very pale face was white in the moonlight and the silvery eyes shone. Harry took his left hand and turned it so that the back of the forearm was upward. He had looked at the black mark between the kisses and the sluts an hour ago, and for some reason it had appealed to him more than he thought it would do.

"I can take it away ..." said Draco low. His voice was a bit different because they had not talked for a long time.

"No." Harry said immediately. "I ... really like it." He felt that he was opposed to just what he had ever believed. But what did it do now? He was used to unexpected surprises and disputes at this time.

Draco laughed at. "Then it must be left." It seemed that he regretted just when he had said it.

Harry also began to think. Was this just a one-time deal, or did they date? Must he, the first thing he does in the morning, tell Ginny that he can not stay with her anymore and stay at Hogwarts over Christmas? "Ginny ..." Harry stabbed, lay on his back and hit the palm of the forehead.

"Are you serious about her now?" said Malfoy wounded.

"I have to tell her." Harry sat up and pulled the t-shirt lying beside him.

"Now?"

"No. First, I have to get a way to do it."

"She does not need to know." Malfoy said, and also put on his shirt. Harry got a last glimpse of his narrow, bare upper body. "Nobody needs to know."

"So ... we will not tell this to anyone?"

"Of course not. It was only once. Tomorrow it's normal again."

"Is it?"

Malfoy drew on his narrow designer jeans and looked down at Harry. "You're pretty cute, Potter." Then he opened the door - the enchantments were lifted - and went out of the classroom.


	8. Revalation

**Chapter 8 – Revelation**

When Draco woke up on the day that the students were going back to their homes, he felt a strange sense of guilt. He had gone deeper into the dream than he had ever done. He had allowed himself to enjoy it, instead of trying to wake up. He lay in bed and felt some kind of satisfaction - it was nevertheless the best sex he had ever had - but at the same time he felt bad about what he had done.

It felt right but at the same time wrong.

Well, now it was long overnight and he could finally go back to normal. He dressed in his finest clothes and wrapped down the jogging pants he had been wearing during the night in the suitcase. Then he went to the lounge where Nott and Zabini sat - who had become friends again - waiting for him.

"Breakfast?"

Draco nodded and they went together to the dining room.

After breakfast, he would have actually gone down to Hogsmeade and then transfer home, but he would take the train instead, because he had not passed the transfer tests yet. Plus, he had not practiced more on them when he last year had collapsed with the death seals.  
Draco looked down on the mark he had on his arm - in the dream, Potter liked it, but it did not make Draco.

As he left the dining room along with Nott and Zabini, Potter and his friends just passed to enter. They looked at each other for a second before both quickly looked away. But during the second Draco looked into Potter's green eyes, he had seen something strange. Potter looked sad, but at the same time afraid. At any rate, he hurried with the Weasley girl just behind him.

The last draco did before he went to the entrance hall was to pick up his suitcase down in the basement. He took his packing and went out through the doorway with the younger students who had not taken the transfer test yet. Now a long journey was waiting for him.  
Just before he jumped up into his own drove drawn by a test tube, he felt a light knock on his shoulder. But when he turned around he saw no one there.

"That's me." whispered an invisible voice in his ear. "Come away to the wall."

Draco really did not understand what Potter wanted him but followed the footprints in the snow to the wall. "What is it?" he asked angry. He did not want to miss the train.

"Are you mad at me?"

"I'm always angry with you, Potter. What's that you want?"

"I just wanted to know one thing. Do you use people just for fun? Though they have girlfriends?"

Draco settled. So that was no dream? "I ... oh ..." he did not know what to answer. Did this really happen? "We'll talk about it after the promise. I have to go to the train."

Draco began to go back to the throats again, but an invisible wall stopped him. "Send a letter with an explanation." commanded Potter's voice. "I will be in the crows over Christmas, you know, the family of Weasley's house. Send the letter at night." Potter's steps disappeared through the gate and up to the castle.

Draco got his own coup on the Hogwartsexpress and could not be happier - no scream, no sound, just quiet and quiet. Before the departure, some second-year students ran outside of Draco's cabin, but he did not care, they would soon settle down. Now he had time to really think about everything. Without being disturbed.

Did Draco really succeed in making his dreams true? Was he and Potter a couple now? Was that what the pots would have explained to themselves? He weighed the benefits of the disadvantages.

Pros: Pots were famous, stylish and apparently quite rich. He was one of the most powerful wizards throughout the ages because he had not only killed The-as-not-Mention-by-Name, but he was also the only one through the ages who had survived the extinction of death - twice.

Cons: He was the "traitor". And what would Draco's family say that he was dating Potter? As well as being a guy ...  
Advantage: Potter could protect Draco and be famous.  
Disadvantage: He was man.  
Advantage: In all probability, Draco actually liked him ...

…

Narcissa Malfoy met Draco at Kings Cross Station. It had started to snow again, but they hurried from the crowd so that they could then transfer to Malfoy's mansion. They walked together for the long, wide drive towards the house without saying a word to each other. It was common for them, but Narcissa still had a restful, fashionable hand against Draco's neck. One of the tall doors of the big house was opened, and a little elf ran out.

"Have you acquired a new house elf?" wondered Draco while the little creature rushed against them.

"Her name is Dory." Just answered Narcissa.

"Can I take your suitcase, Mr. Malfoy?" squeaked the little elf that had a small uptight, big blue eyes and thin hairballs spattering from the head.

"Certainly." just mumbled Draco, dropped the suitcase and continued toward the house. He heard how the ally with effort began to drag it over the snow. "Be careful." he roused and looked over his shoulder. "There are delicate things in it."

"Of course, sir, sorry me sir." Squeaked alright frightened, snapped her fingers and got the suitcase to hover a bit in front of her.

"She's a bit slow." whispered Narcissa who went to the left of Draco.

It was not that they were angry with each other, but Draco understood that his mother was worried that her sister, Bellatrix Lestrange, had died a few months earlier, while her husband, Lucius Malfoy, was seized at the wizards prison Azkaban. It would be a very calm and boring christmas.

…

In the evening, after dinner as Dory's house lamb had cooked (it was a little burnt, but Draco's mother did not seem to care about it), Draco sat in bed in his room and just looked out through the high windows. He could only see the sky because his room was on the third floor and was so big that it was at least ten meters to the window from the bed, but what he saw from the sky was viewable enough. It was carbon black with shining stars sprinkled everywhere.

He began to remember the easier time, when he only went to Hogwarts school, played quidditch, attended classes. Now everything was meaningless. It was Draco's mother who had pretended that he would go to school and get his N.E.W.T degree, he did not care at all.  
Tomorrow, the first semester's grades would come with the post, and he did not think for a moment that he had anything higher than acceptable in any subject at school.

School. Potter wanted Draco to write to him. But what would he write? " _Do you use people for fun, even though they have girlfriends_?" Potter had said. If that were what he wanted to know, he would be happy to wait until Christmas. Why would Potter confuse everything?

Draco felt empty. Mentally exhausted. He did not want anymore, did not want to live. The night with pots had been something extraordinary, something different. He had never had such feelings before, he wanted Potter at his place right now. He wanted to talk to him about everything, just talk. About his life. About his past life, when he lived only in the dark and fear of Lord Voldemort. No one had ever been so close to Draco's life before, and that one had to be a complicated one.

He looked down on his arm again. The black mark glitters from the moonlight. He knew it was impossible to get rid of it - you really had to cut off your own arm if you were dissatisfied with it.

A tear landed on his arm.

…

Because the Malfoy family did not have any relatives left, and because Narcissa refused to reconnect with the rest of the dead seals (who had never really been close friends), only mother and son sat at the long table and ate dinner the night before Christmas nine days later. Earlier in the morning, Draco had opened some Christmas presents from his mother who contained the usual; several garment designer clothes, designer shoes and a really nice designer pen with a phoenix spring. He did not use it in school because the phoenixes were so unusual. They talked like usual during dinner, but not as smooth as before.

"It's Christmas, Draco. Can not you tell me about your grades?" asked Narcissa and smiled moderately against him across the table.

"No rather not." he just answered and looked down in the plate. "The Alfa seems to have succeeded with the food for once."

"Well ..." Narcissa took a bite from her bread. "How are you with that girl you liked before? Pansy Parkinson. Is she at school too?"

"She also went in a year."

"Are you still ..?"

"No." It was silent for a few seconds, then Draco released the fork on the table with a bang. "Do not you think everything is changing now? Why in the world would she still be dating me?"

"I did not think ... I did not know you'd be so upset. I thought that after all things have gotten better, now that ... the Lord of Darkness has been defeated ... maybe you too ..."

"Yes, but it was wrong, right?" Narcissa looked at Draco with big glossy eyes. "Can I leave the table?"

"Of course ..." she muttered.

Draco nodded, rose to the hall to the stairs without barely touching his plate. When he reached the second floor he heard a picked sound from the floor over. It came from his room. He opened the door to his bedroom and saw an owl sitting on the window ward with springed feathers. It looked cold and annoyed, it had probably been there for a long time. Draco walked through the room and released the owl. It sat on his desk on the right and stretched irritated to the leg. Draco knocked up the tape that held the letter, and without worrying about the owl he sat down on the bed and read it.

The owl was hot and flew its way. Take care to have some books out of the shelf in the wings.

 _Draco Malfoy, Malfoys Manor_

He read on the front. Do not say that ... But Draco opened the letter to see what it was.

 _Do you want it like this?_ _  
_ _I do not care._ _  
_  
A very short letter. Sure, Draco thought. As if he cared? They both had made a mistake, now it's just forgetting! He tore the letter, lit fire on the pieces of paper with the magic wand and threw them through the window before closing it with a bang.

Why was it so difficult? Everything was up and down right now! He just wanted to forget everything, hide somewhere, far away. He lay on his back in bed and pushed his fist to the eyelids until he began to see stars, then he let go.

An hour later, Draco drank two thirds of his dad's fine whiskey he had found in the bar downstairs in the family room. He had picked it up in the room without asking his mother - he was still wealthy now, and she did not need to know everything. He sat on his wide windowboard with a pillow in his arms, looking out at the stars on the dark sky. The little one saw at least - a new snow storm was coming, so it was largely white everywhere. Had it not been for the insulated walls, one would have heard every wind of breath. He opened the window.

The bottle was in front of him, and he had a cigarette in his hand. Draco had actually stopped smoking a long time ago, he had begun to smoke the others in his student home, and he would fit in. He stopped at the same time Voldemort had given him the task of killing Dumbledore almost a year and a half ago. Mostly because he did not have time to get cigarettes all the time, it was more that he forgot the desire because he had so much stress to think about. But now he sat there with a bottle of whiskey and his sixth cigarette in an hour.

He leaned back and felt the ice-cold wind from the window that was on the verge. Draco had to have one foot in the slip so that the wind would not grab the box and throw it against the window opening so that it was scratched. He blew, wondered. He had come to the conclusion that he actually likes Potter. He despised him, but liked him at the same time. It was a strange feeling, but it felt nice to finally recognize it for itself. It must have been the alcohol that kicked him.

He just wanted to write a letter and explain everything to the black-haired man. Or why not just go there yourself and say it, eye to eye?

Suppose he, Draco, would like just guys? That's why he had never had any real interest in girls. He had played for the same team all this time. And imagine that it was just Potter he fell for, and think Potter also happened to be just what he was now.

 _I_ , thought he, _Draco Malfoy, is gay_. And he smiled.


	9. Lies

**Chapter 9 – Lies**

The snowstorm that had gone through all night had finally stopped and at four o'clock in the morning Harry could finally sleep. But three hours later, however, Mrs. Weasley knocked on Percy's bedroom door. It was the room they had converted to Harry's room now because Percy had moved out.

"Breakfast, Harry. Are you awake?" said Mrs. Weasley with warm voice.

"A moment." Harry said silently and heard the steps from Molly as she proceeded up the stairs to Ron's room.

The first Harry thought about were the letter he had sent yesterday. He had had several days to really decide what he wanted. He had given Malfoy more chances, but he locked the door all the time and now Harry wanted nothing more than celebrating his Christmas together with the Weasley family, with his girlfriend Ginny who he was crazy about. Hermione, the family Lovegood and Neville and his grandmother would come over for Christmas lunch later in the day. That was something Harry really looked forward to.

"Harry?" It was George who knocked on the door, Ron's big brother. Meanwhile, Mrs. Weasley was just heading down the stairs again.

"Just step in." Harry sat down in bed and wore the glasses that had been lying on the bedside table.

"Merry Christmas!" George climbed in.

"Merry Christmas."

Georges face dissolves in a smile, and it was so strange not to see his twin brother, Fred, by his side, with an exact same smile. Fred had died in the war against Voldemort about half a year ago. It was very empty without him. "Ron has not woken yet. Will we tease him?"

"Certainly." Harry got up and went for George through the hall to the next staircase.  
It felt a bit like he was trying to replace his twin brother's place with Harry, but Harry was more than happy to make him happy.

They could hear Ron's snoring through the door. He had just fell asleep after Mrs. Weasley tried to wake him up.

"Here's how we'll do," George said, "if I hang him up in your feet, you're using aquamenti on his pants and ..."

"Oh, that's unnecessary ..."

Harry and George turned around. "It was quite typical that his girlfriend would come in the last second." sighed George.

"Gentlemen." Hermione walked past them, opening the door to Ron's room, then closing down.

"It's not that hard to understand what her trick is to wake him up." George said with a fair laugh.

"Oh, shut up with you." heard the voice of Hermione from the other side of the door.

"Breakfast?" asked Harry.

They went down the stairs to the kitchen where Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were already sitting. Ginny sat at the table five minutes after Harry and George, and a few minutes after her, Hermione and Ron, who were wearing clothes, still looked very tired.

"It was that freaky snow weather that kept me awake tonight." yawned Ron and took care of rice turf.

"Match your tongue." warned Mrs. Weasley and waved with a spoon. "Oh, here comes Percy!"

All of Weasley, Harry and Hermione's family looked through the kitchen window. A black figure had transferred just outside the graveyard gate and went to the house.

"Good morning, Harry." Harry felt a hand against his knee and turned to the left.

"Well, good morning." He kissed Ginny. "Did you sleep well?"

"Of course." She looked around to see that everyone was paying attention to something else. Then she said with a low voice: "I just wish you had been in my room tonight. It was quite cold, scary and ... lonely."

"You could have picked me up." assured Harry. But he became nervous about speaking in that tone to her family. "We'll get to this later." Then he whispered when the door opened and Percy stepped in.

"Merry Christmas, everyone!" he shouted through the scarf and quickly closed the door so that the weather of snow would not flood the kitchen floor. "It's so cold outside right now."

"It's twenty minus." answered Mr. Weasley. "But Kingsley wanted us at the office later today, Percy. Are you with?"

"Of course, daddy."

It was like they had never broken. The whole family was gathered again. Percy took off his outer clothes and sat down on a free chair at the table.

"Where shall Ted and Mrs. Tonks be for Christmas, mom?" wondered Ginny.

Ted Lupin was Harry's son of God. It was Remus Lupin who had asked him last winter, and he and his wife Nymphadora Tonks were some of them who died in the war against Voldemort, alongside Fred Weasley. Ted was currently living with Nymphadora Tonk's mother, who was his godmother.

"They will come here, of course. Everything is so stressful now, dear. But yes, they'll hit both of them."

"What fun! Then we get to know Teddy a bit better, too." said Ginny.

Harry noticed more and more how Ginny began to attach to Remus and Tonk's son. Harry had done that too, but he understood that he would soon get up if she wanted her own children.

So early? It felt so.

…

Towards eleven, Lovegoods came along with Longdbottoms. They all had a nice and nice lunch together, Weasley's, Lovegoods, Longbottoms, Harry and Hermione. But after lunch, Hermione had to go home to her own family to celebrate Christmas the "muggling fish" as she called it. Harry was used to how Weasley celebrated so he did not really understand what she meant. But it was about the same as how to celebrate in the wizards world.

There is a lot of drinking in the evening after the Christmas dinner and the gift opening. Mrs Tonks for home with a sleepy Ted. Those who were left drank and laughed and ate pies that Mrs. Weasley had baked. Ginny had already reached seventeen years but did not drink as much as the others would think she would do. She was not like many other girls of her age, she was very mature for her age; something that Harry appreciated.

"Do you want to go out with me?" she asked Harry.

"Certainly." They went together to the farm with jackets and scarves.

"Surely the sky is beautiful?" said Ginny and looked up.

Harry also looked up. He did not see a cloud on the dark sky and every single star seemed. "Very." he just said.

When he turned his face back, he was met by Ginny's lips. They kissed each other for a while, then Harry resigned.

"What is it?" wondered Ginny.

"What?"

"You've ignored me the whole time you've been here. I did not really want to pick it up, not to be boring. But I'm getting annoyed." She looked at Harry with a wrinkled forehead. It really bothered her to say that, just that she had to.

"I have not ignored you? In such cases, Ginny, has not been good, I promise. I would never ever hurt you. "

"I understand that you still can not let go of what has happened. I do not, either. But I thought it would be better after tonight. Now that everyone has gone, you've met with those who are still alive. You've been so strange I understand you, Harry, do not believe anything else, but I do not want you to hold anything for me. I've said it several times and I'll say it again, you can talk about everything with me."

Harry got a little upset. She had got the whole backfoot situation, but how could he ever tell the truth about her? "I'm going to improve, and do not mind anything I'm doing or not. Did I want to stop meeting you, I'd say that. Okay?"

"Okay…"

Harry took a step forward and hugged Ginny. "I love you."

"I love you too."

He wanted to tell the truth to her, he would. But how could he ever do that? _You're coward_ , _Harry Potter_ , said a voice in his head. _You are cowardly and abominable and a liar_.

…

Maybe it was the alcohol, or all the good food in the stomach, or the conversation with Ginny that made him dream again. This time they were in Harry's old bedroom at Privet drive number four of all places. Malfoy sat in Harry's old bed and drank a cup of tea, Hedwig sat in the cage and hot and Harry just opened the window to let her out at night hunting.

"It's really a beautiful owl, that." said Draco and ate a piece of tea.

"You have to be a bit quieter." Harry whispered. "Otherwise, my uncle wakes up. And yes," he opened the cage, Hedwig jumped up on his arm, released her and saw her flying away, "she was very beautiful." Harry closed the window and sat in bed next to Draco.

"Can not we just go from here?"

"It's not possible." Harry nodded to the window that now had a grille, like six years ago when Ron and his brothers had rescued him with their dad's flying car.

"Right." Draco just murmured. "The tea was not that good."

"I know, I have no sugar." mumbled Harry and remembered the loose board under the bed. He lay on the floor and opened it, then he picked up some wooden pieces and laid them on the bed.

"Your old Nimbus?" Draco wondered, put down the cup on the bedside table and sat in the changing room.

"I guess so." just said Harry, who began to suspect something was foolish. Had it not broken and been lost several years ago? What happened to his thunderstorm?

Suddenly it was "Awakening" on the broom shaft instead of "Nimbus 2000", then it was no stranger than that. Fixed the quake was also gone really, or?

Harry threw down the broom on the floor, which had now become full, and moved closer to Draco. "Why do not you write to me more often? I miss you."

Draco moved a few inches from Harry. "You have a girlfriend, Harry. You love her. What am I compared to her? You know how much we've hated each other before, we still do."

But Harry shook his head. "You are everything compared to her. I know we've had a hard time in recent years, and even harder in recent months. But you're here," he held one hand against the chest, "as Ginny does not. For some reason, I do not feel for her the same way I do for you. It's like ... different. "

"That's because you're gay." just said Draco easily.

"Gay?" Harry whispered when he woke up and lay down in Percy's old bedroom in the Burrow.

…

Harry told the family that he had to be rested for a few days, but that he would come back before New Year's Eve.

"Are you sure now, Harry?" asked Mr. Weasley.

"There is no one who can hurt me anymore." Harry answered with the gasket on his back. He just brought some extra clothes and books from school. He could as well take a little effort. "And Krake will take care of me." said he turned to Mrs. Weasley. "He likes to cook for me."

"Take care of you, friend." Mrs. Weasley hugged Harry and kissed him on the cheek. "Come back late."

"See you, Harry." said Ron and Mr. Weasley pushed his hand. "It's just saying, and I'll be on my stump."

"Hope you can solve it." Ginny said in a hug, but she did not kiss him.

"There's nothing with us two to do." Harry laughed and kissed her. "It's just me." He felt how the lie was sweating in his throat.

"Do not you want me to come with you? I will not be in the ministry until half an hour. " said Mr. Weasley.

"It's not necessary, so see you in a few days!" Harry smiled wide and opened the door, then went to the gate and transferred to Grimmauld.

Crack ran to the hall when he heard the door opened. "Oh, Mr. Potter, how nice would you like to visit your house again. Can I help you?" he said with dark and hoarse voice.

"I'll stay for a few days." Harry answered and walked into the kitchen.

"Of course, Mr. Harry Potter!" the algae shines up. "I'll start cleaning immediately. You can stay in Sir Sirius Black's old bedroom."

"Thank you, Krake."

"Do you want something to eat or drink?"

"Have a glass of pumpkin juice."

"Right now sir." Krake bugged himself and put a glass of cold pumpkin juice on the kitchen table before he started cleaning in Sirius old room and bed the bed in clean bedding.

On the first day, Harry spent only in bed, as well as the second, third, fourth, fifth. If a letter came to him, the owl had still found the Grimmald plane. Krake went to the room for him, but he did not eat much of it.

On the sixth day of the morning Harry went down the stairs and saw that the whole house was clean and tidy. There was no dust or any spider web as far as Harry could see.

"You've been doing fine here." Harry spoke with a mechanical voice when he entered the kitchen and saw Krake prepare coffee. "I'll sit here and have breakfast today."

"So nice to see you out of bed, Mr. Potter. Do you feel better today?"

"There." mumbled Harry and got a cup of coffee. "Has the magazine come?"

"Yes, sir, along with a letter from Miss Hermione Granger." The ally laid the newspaper and the letter in front of Harry, he opened Hermione's letter.

 _Hello Harry,_ _  
_ _I heard you had gone to Black's old house on Grimmauld._ _  
_ _Are you not feeling well? Do you want me to come over?_ _  
_ _Ginny told me she was worried about you. We are all Harry, and we will support you to one hundred percent._ _  
_ _See you tomorrow at the Weasley family. Ron said you would at least celebrate New Year there. Otherwise we will be in school after Christmas._ _  
_ _Take care of you, Harry, we are all on your side._ _  
_  
 _Many hugs_ _  
_ _Hermione_ _  
_  
Harry understood that they were worried. He had never left the crowd on his own before, because it had always been like a home for him. He understood that he would have to go back soon to show them that they did not have to worry more. He would have to set up a facade.

 _Hermione,_ _  
_ _I feel good. Certainly. I just wanted to stay here to get to the house, but after all, I will move here after the school year._ _  
_ _I promised Mrs. Weasley that I would come back to New Year, so of course we'll be there._ __

 _Harry_ _  
_  
He decided to go back already in the afternoon, there was nothing to get rid of anymore. It was next semester Harry worried about the most.


	10. Grimmauld

**Grimmauld**

Lucius Malfoy would actually live in Azkaban on lifetime, but they had come to the conclusion that he was no longer a danger and that he had acted during the imperial curse, or whatever it was. Something like Draco at least did not care much about. Draco and his mother received a letter at home on New Year's Eve where he told the news to them.

Narcissa folded a tear of happiness when she read the letter for Draco. "Your father is coming home." she said low and smiled greatly. "At last it will be as usual again."

Draco knew that his mother was the only one he could talk to, so without mentioning the latest news, he asked: "Mom ... what would you say if I do not like Pansy?"

"Your old girlfriend? Nothing, you can always find another girl. You're so handsome." She climbed him on her shoulder and passed the living room. Draco just followed. Narcissa sat in an armchair near the fire and opened her book she was reading before the letter came. "Was not you ready?"

"No, it's like, something more ..." he felt how he became nervous and pulled his hand through his hair. "That's something I want to tell you, but you definitely can not tell something to your father."

"What is that sweetie?" asked Narcissa worriedly.

"Well ... I do not like Pansy."

"Yes?"

"I really do not like any girls at Hogwarts ..."

"You'll stop there soon. You can meet women in many other places. Just because I met your father there does not mean meeting your future wife at school."

"But I mean ... I do not like girls ... at all."

"What are you trying to say, Draco? What do you mean you do not like girls at all?"

Draco looked at his mother with a lowered head.

"Oh ... Oh! So you mean you ... you do not like girls ..." Draco nodded. Narcissa closed the book and put it on the table next to it. She took a deep breath. Draco, who seemed to think he'd never said anything, felt how his face was hot. "You know you and I love you, right?" You are eighteen years old and young. You will find the right one for you. Whether you are a man or a woman. Do you understand? It was very courageous to tell me this to me. "

"So you do not care?"

"Of course not, sweetheart! You're still my son, no matter what." She walked forward and hugged Draco. "Welcome Out."

…

The following evening, there was a party in the big ballroom in Malfoy's mansion. Lucius had come home and invited almost the entire ministry and neighbors around the area. He had even hired people who had embellished the whole hall with new year's decor and fixed all over the place.

"I know it was on short notice, and I apologize. But I just got to know that I would get out of that place, and I thought a New Year's party would not be completely wrong." Lucius said when he greeted his guests from the balcony to the office in the ballroom. "Warmly welcome everyone, I hope the evening will come to your satisfaction. Food and drink will be found at the backside."

Draco stood at the top of the stairs inside the hall in front of the door of the office, he did not want to attend the festivities, but he was glad that his father was at home and was in such a good mood, and glad that his mother was finally happy, but most of all, he felt relieved to have told his secret to his mother. She promised not to say anything to her husband, she thought Draco would tell him when he was ready.

Draco had already had some drinks and felt relaxed, but bored. He walked down the stairs and through the hall (some arrived and greeted so he had to stay several times), then he walked through the large hall with the crystal chandelier on the roof and on to the living room where his father and his own owl were.

Draco sat on a chair in the bar with parchment and quilt pen, dipped the pen in the ink horn and then began writing on the paper.

 _Meet me outside my house. Bring your coat._ _  
_ _Draco_

He just wrote.

"Take this letter to Harry Potter, The Crow, Weasley's House." Draco said, giving the letter to one of the owls and releasing it through the window.

He did not really want them to meet outside his house, but Draco still did not know how to transfer.

How long would it take for the owl to arrive? How far away did the Weasley family really live? But Draco nevertheless decided to go out the gates and wait. The plan was that he would have to wait half an hour, then he would go back in.

It was very cold. It was nine o'clock when he heard a little bang away at the tree lane.  
"Malfoy?" he heard someone whisper a few yards away.

"Who else?"

"What do you want now? Hope it's important, because I do not want them to find out I'm gone."

"I just wanted to wish you a happy new year." Draco said with his hands in his pockets. He had forgotten the gloves inside the house.

"You could not write in the letter?" Potter pulled the mantle off the face so they could look at each other.

"No."

"Well, yes, thank you. Now I have to go back."

"Do not you want to come in for a while?" Draco said low.

"In to your house?"

"We have a party, you see. But I thought it was boring, so I'll still just sit in my room all night."

"I really do not know what you're up to, but it's no fun anymore."

"I'm not trying to be funny." Draco walked and stood right in front of Harry. He took the mantle and placed himself under it with the dark-haired man. Now that they stood so close to each other, one could notice the difference in length between them. Draco looked down at Harry. "I'm freezing, do you want to come in?" He pressed against Potter and could feel his heart beating hard between them.

Potter he did not answer, because Draco had bent down to try and press his lips repeatedly against his neck.

Harry swallowed. "A little while would not hurt."

…

For the first time in days, Draco finally felt calm and happy again. It must be Harry's closeness who does it. They were under the hood in Draco's big bed.

"This still feels unreal, but I do not think you managed to trick me into this again."

"It's not that hard to trick you, Potter. You're pretty naive."

"Thanks for that." mumbled Harry. "I must probably return."

"Do you come and greet before school begins?" asked Draco and pulled his hand along Harry's bare back, he sat up in bed.

"I do not understand how I could be. But can we discuss this now?"

"There is nothing to discuss." Draco turned his side away from Harry.

"I'm cheating on my girlfriend. I cannot have both of you, so I need to know how you want it."

Would he choose Draco in front of Weasley, only if Draco said so? "As long as we do not mix feelings in this, it's not infidelity." Draco heard himself say.

"You are probably right." sighed Harry and Draco's belly squeezed into hugs. "Me and Ginny still do not have ... so yes, that's just the emotion it's about."

"Have not you been with your girlfriend? I thought you'd been together for a long time."

"She is so upset, no sex before marriage." Harry said quite relaxed. He did not seem to have a problem talking about Draco.

"Wait ... before me, were you innocent?"

"Yes." Harry said easily.

"Wow, I really did not believe it. The famous Harry Potter, did not get a shot in all his life." Draco laughed and put his hands in front of him as if he drew an invisible newspaper heading.

"Now, you're trying to be fun. I guess there's another thing in Slytherin's home, huh?"

"Nobody is sure there." agreed Draco.

Harry got up and walked to the big windows. As usual it was dark outside, but the sky was sometimes lit by some rockets that people pushed up in advance. "It's half past ten, I think they've discovered I'm not left." mumbled Harry and turned to the bed to pick up his clothes from the floor.

Draco followed Harry down the stairs. They said goodbye to each other in the hall. Harry stood under the invisibility jacket, but Draco still found the branch on Harry's pants and clasped. "Do not be cheating on me now."

Harry suffered low, both of pain and of excitement. "If I am, it will be your fault. Idiot."

"Jump to your girlfriend."

The door was opened and closed, then Draco was alone. He hated the thought that Harry was going home to his girlfriend now, he got into the head of just the word. But at the same time, he dared not tell Harry that he had feelings for him. Harry may not even have feelings for Draco ...

"There you are Draco. I've been looking for you." It was Lucius who came out in the hall. He went to Draco and put his hand on his shoulder. "Come here, I'd like to introduce you to someone." He drove Draco further towards the ballroom. "This is our new sorcerer, Harald Greengrass, and his daughter Astoria."

Draco watched the girl standing next to the minister. She appeared to be a year younger, Draco recognized her as the girl who got Theodor Nott and Blaise Zabini to start barking at school.

"Mr Greengrass," said Draco and pressed the minister's hand, "Astoria."

"You know enough from school. Why do not you show her around the house, Draco?" said Lucius. "I and the magistrate have a few things to discuss."

"Maybe you could show me your room?" Astoria asked with big eyes and wide smile.

"Certainly." sighed Draco. But he still tried to keep the mask as rich and well-behaved. "Of course." They went out into the hall again and further up the stairs. "I must also ask you to stop trying to get my love drinks in school."

"Nice. But I'm not interested in you that way, Draco." they stayed above the stairs. "You may do what you want with me."

"I'm actually not at all interested in you that way. I can still be a good host and show you the house, but you can not make me see you so."

"See me how then?" wondered Astoria. "You think I'm talking about sex?"

Draco blew his eyes. "I know."

"But you do not think I'm attractive?"

"Not at all."

Astoria stamped in the floor so that the dress was going on, and slipped, then she walked down the stairs to the ballroom again.

Then then, Draco could go back to his room again and spend the rest of New Year's Eve alone.

He sat in the window once again with a pillow while watching the fireworks that played high in the sky at the twelfth battle. "No New Year's Eve kiss this year either." he sighed.

…

The next day, Draco packed his stuff in the suitcase, at eleven the train went back to school. He had hoped Harry would show up, but it was a bit unnecessary, he thought so afterwards, because they'd even meet at school tonight. He co-transferred with his mother to Kings Cross station where the train was waiting.

"Do you have everything now?" asked Narcissa and brushed snow from Draco's shoulders.

"I think so, otherwise you'll send it."

"Of course. Yes, then. Have a good term now, and send a lot of letters. Tell me what's going on at school. I mean everything." she added in a whisper and smiled.

Draco understood that she meant he would tell if he met a guy. "I will. We'll be heard." he threw up his luggage on the train and then sat in a passenger compartment.

Five minutes later, Goyle entered, he had not done a transfer test yet. Goyle babbled a little about what he was doing on the promise, then there was nothing more about it.

…

The train slowed into Hogsmead Station when it had darkened out and Draco and Goyle carried out their bags and stood at the edge where the wagon pulled by test rails would come.

"I've been waiting for you for an hour." whispered a voice in his ear. And before Draco responded he was transferred from there. "You cannot transfer all the way to school. Come on." An invisible hand drew Draco against the forbidden forest.

"My bags ..." mumbled Draco, but he was pressed against a tree and Harry pulled off his mantle.

"We'll have time for them later." Harry frustrated and began kissing Draco on his throat. "I've missed you."

…

Draco and Harry spent each evening with each other. At first it was difficult when they did not know where they were going to house without being discovered, and after Draco had rated the ghostly cottage, Harry showed him to his own house on the Grimmauld.

"Do you have your own house?" Draco said when they crossed the threshold. "Do you own this, by yourself?"

"I received it from my godfather three years ago, but I have not been able to live here while Voldemort was still on the move, it was far too dangerous."

"Do you have a godfather? I thought you lived with some muggers throughout your upbringing, and this is not a muggle house. " Draco said with a wrinkle between the eyebrows.

"He died three years ago, that's why I got it. And I did not know I had a godfather from the beginning."

Harry began to show Draco around. Draco stopped at the wall in one of the rooms and watched a big carpet hanging on it. "Wait a minute ... the Black family? Did the family Black live here? There is Sirius Black, the first man who escaped from Azkaban."

"Sirius was my godfather." Harry said, sitting down on the couch under the family tree.

"Your godfather was the cousin of my aunt."

"I know everything about that. I actually think I know more about your family than you do."

"Remember, we've always been so close to each other, but still so far away. Sirius Black, a murderous massacre, Harry Potter's godfather. And you fell with him? There's a bit of darkness with you, Potter. " Draco laughed calmly and winked at Harry.

"He never killed, he was innocently convicted."

"Sure, they're all saying." said Draco and started walking around the room to look around.

"It's true. It was Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail, who killed all those muggers. But Sirius got the blame. I thought you knew. You hung up with Wormtail almost last year. "

"Was that how it went?" Draco had picked up a small statue and turned to Harry.

"I can beat that all my fortune, what about."

The time was one at night before they decided to go back to school again. This evening, Draco had just asked Harry about his life. He listened very interested and just wanted to know more. He did not think there was so much to know about Harry Potter, and how hard he had. Why did he hate this man from the beginning? Was it envy? But now he was thinking what was it really to be jealous of?


	11. The promise

**Chapter 11 - The Promise**

"Did you really drop the bottle by the way?" asked Harry.

It was in the middle of the night, they had just been in Sirius Black's old house for the first time together and were now heading back to school.

"The bottle?" wondered Draco.

"The one with love drink in, you know ..."

"Oh ..." Draco laughed and looked down into the ground. "Honestly, that was not a joke."

"I'm glad you dropped it." Harry said to the Slytherin life with his shoulder.

"Me too." acknowledged Draco.

"Have you always been good at magic art or did you just walk that day?" Harry was retarded.

Draco looked up with a bad smile. "I've always been good ... or ... not really ... okay, I was most lucky ..."

"We both had a trip." Harry grabbed Draco's hand, began to feel nervous, but pushed his thoughts to the sides.

"I have my tricks, you know."

Harry wrinkled the forehead - trick? He remembered the sixth year at school, when he had received better grades in magic art using a special book. That could not have been something Draco talked about? On the other hand, the book burned up with everything else in the go-and-go room the day Vincent Crabbe had released a devil's fire to stop Harry, Ron and Hermione. Crabbe himself had died in the fire and Harry had saved Draco from burning up.

"Trick?" Harry asked, swallow the lump into his throat that threatened to overwhelm him.

"I cannot tell you ... not yet, at least." Draco shrugged his shoulders. "It's no cheating or so ... I'm just ... alright." He looked directly at Harry. "I'm good at magic art simply, all I cannot do is affect the death ..."

"You cannot do _that_?" wondered Harry surprised.

"There are a lot of stuff that not even _you_ know about, Harry Potter."

Harry decided not to ask more. The Slytherin life seemed to make him know more than Harry did. "The day you affect death, Draco, I promise I'll never tell you again."

Draco fails, but logs. "Good. But only you know, I'm never wrong."

They were silent for a while, and although Harry was trying to let go of everything, he could not stop thinking about everything that happened almost two years ago.

"By the way, I never apologized for what I did the sixth year ... That day ... in the bathroom ..." mumbled Harry while walking hand in hand under the robe up to the castle.

"We were both very angry at that time."

"I know, but it was a completely untested curse I threw over you. I had no idea what it was like. What if you had died?"

"Do not mind it. I managed, yes."

"You do not know how much I've regretted it. And I'm still doing it." Harry stopped and stood in front of the blonde. "Sorry, Draco. I mean it."

"If I do not remember wrong, I think I could have thrown some _deaths_ around me. I'm as bad. But come on, it was almost two years ago, we forget it."

They continued to go to school.

"What did you do in there by the way?" but Harry regretted the same moment he had asked, who was he to lay in?

"I ... greeted a friend." mumbled Draco, and Harry asked nothing more. He understood that he would not talk about it.

The time when they had gathered in the girls' bathroom on the third floor, where Draco had sought up unhappy Myrtle (his maybe only friend at the time) to talk about all the stress he went through. That's when he had the task of Voldemort to kill Dumbledore, and it was nothing that Draco really wanted, but his parents' lives were at stake if he did not. It was also the same year that Harry had found the Half-Blood Prince's old magic book, and in that the curse " _sectumsempra_ " was smeared.

Severus Snape had come in just as Harry kneeled next to the bleeding Draco, and that's when he realized that Harry had his old book from school. It was Severus Snape who had been the half-blood prince.

Harry gave a thought to those who did not live anymore, and he thought it was a shame that so many had to die for Voldemort's hand. But it was as Dumbledore had said; " _Do not feel sorry for the dead, Harry. Shame on those still alive, and above all those who live without love._ "

He had stayed back so much in recent months, but now it was no longer. The stomach clenched and his knees woke up, the lump that had always threatened to overwhelm Harry now, and powerfully.

"Harry? How are you?" Draco sat down beside Harry with his hands on his shoulders.

Harry held his arms hard around his stomach, as though he held back something that was trying to tear himself out. He could not say anything, it was like having landed on his back after a high fall. The air was over. They had reached the foot of the stairs up to the gateway.

"Please tell me what's happening. Tell me what to do!" Draco began to become hysterical.

Then everything burst out. The tears sank down for the cheeks, and Harry took a breath like a tear and tore in the chest. He would understand if Draco would just leave. Who would stop to watch a man break down in this way? But Draco stopped and stretched Harry over his back.

"Get out, just." he whispered. They were still under the mantle and a wind caught the edge of it.

Harry shook, but not by the cold. "It's so unfair only." he got a close.

"I know." answered Draco.

"Why do everyone die? Why do everyone die in my presence? Why I?"

"Everyone has lost someone during the war."

"I would have done anything to revive Voldemort, and then kill him again, and again and again ..."

It was quiet for a while while Harry's blood was boiling. "Do you know what happened to his body?"

"No?" Harry looked unruly, almost annoyed, at the blonde, why would he care about it?

"Too bad, otherwise we could have looked it up and pee on the leftovers."

Harry got rid of a lazy laugh. A little of the pain dropped. "Thank you," he frustrated and wiped his eyes with the jacket, "I needed it. Sorry for breaking up like that."

"Better with me than lonely. Come here." Draco helped Harry up on his legs again. Both stretched themselves, blood flow had stayed somewhere above the knees.

Everything had changed between them, and Harry was happy about it. Now he had found someone he could talk to really, someone who could comfort him in the way he needed. He knew he had Hermione or Ginny if he needed to talk about his feelings, but Draco was there in a way that pleased him more.

.

.

.

Days became weeks and the N.E.W.T tests approached. January passed slowly to February without any weather changes. Harry walked down the stairs to the Great Hall together with Ron, who seemed quieter than usual. Valentine's Day approached, and Harry understood that he was nervous because it was the first for Ron to spend with a girl.

"I need to talk to you about something." mumbled Ron by Harry's side.

"What are you up to, my friend?" wondered Harry.

"It's something that yelled me eaten on me for a few weeks now. I need your advice."

"Shall we take it after dinner, or do you want to say it now?" Harry asked for a little silence.

Ron walked past the doors to the dining room and sat under a window. He looked down in the floor when Harry had stayed in front of him.

"Get out now." Harry laughed. "I've never seen you like this before. Is it about Saturday?"

"In a way. And Hermione."

"I understood."

"Well ... I thought ... How are you doing?"

"How are you doing?"

Ron looked up at Harry a quick ice, but then looked down again. He started digging his pocket and pulling out a little black velvet to show it to Harry.

"Wow, Ron, I do not know what to say." Harry was retarded. "But are you serious? Are you going to free Hermione on Valentine's Day?"

Ron nodded. "There is no ring in it, of course. But it will be more like a promise. I'll get the ring as soon as I've got a job after school."

"Congratulations, horny." Harry climbed Ron on his back. "She'll be happy whatever you have in that box."

"Thanks ... Now to the case. Do you still kneel? I'll tell you how I feel before or after I'm sitting down? I'll just throw it out?"

Harry thought for a while, neither was he sure. "The knee down is a good idea. You'll probably talk a little bit about you before, just then you ask."

Ron's ears began to turn red. He was embarrassed to talk about such things. "Thanks." he just mumbled. "Shall we eat?"

They ate dinner before they went up to the Gryffindor tower again.

"When should you ask Ginny?"

Harry stumbled on the stairs. "Ginny?"

"My sister." said Ron and raised his eyebrows. "Because you are serious about her?"

Harry had not thought about it before. He had come to mind Draco and their coming date now that night that he had completely forgotten Ron's little sister, who was also his current girlfriend. Would he marry her? Would he even marry? "Well, uhm..."

"I drove with you! I will not push you." laughed Ron and dunk Harry in his back. "Come on, we'll look up the girls. I have not seen any of them all day."

Even though they talked a lot about things they wanted to ease from their shoulders, Harry and Draco never spoke of other feelings-to each other. Each time they divorced in the little hours they kissed each other and then went to their own homes. Harry worried a little bit about Valentine's Day as he would celebrate with Ginny. But he had done it unnecessarily, because Draco never mentioned anything about that day. That was part of their deal - no emotions involved. And Valentine's Day was about two people in an emotional relationship, something Harry and Draco did not have.

Harry and Ginny had the whole weekend for themselves because Hermione at the last minute had surprised Ron with having booked a room at a nice little hotel somewhere in Scotland. She wanted them to get there by plane, because Ron had never flown before. Then on Friday, when the Gryffindor team really had to train in the evening (but now could not because Ron had gone to Scotland with Hermione), Harry and Ginny went up to Gryffindor's Tower after dinner to study a little bit for the samples that would start in just two months.

But when the wall clock in the living room struck twelve, both became too tired to continue.  
When Harry had slammed the book, he was overwhelmed by Ginny. She sat across his knees and kissed him in a very passionate way. "Good night." she whispered, stepped off and gathered her books, feathers and ink horns, then went to the girls dorms with a final glimpse of Harry's surprised face.

He had a strange feeling just running after her and tearing her down in bed ... How could that happen?

Harry decided to put all such feelings aside, the feelings of guilt included, on Saturday when he and Ginny would have a day entirely for themselves. Because both were empowered they could go to Hogsmeade whenever they wanted, only they told Professor McGonagall before, so they went down there to have lunch on Three Tassels. Neither Ginny nor Harry were particularly fond of sitting in Pudifoot's with the love couples, it would seem far too obvious.

They ate while talking about everything between heaven and earth, until Ginny said, "Just do not forget to tie your shoes before we go. I saw a string dangling after you when we entered, and I do not want to see you stumble and hurt you more than you need. "

"Oh, some scratches have never killed anyone."

Ginny log spotted Harry, she looked a little like Mrs. Weasley. Harry sat down on the floor next to the table.

"You did not have to do it now." laughed Ginny, then she helped him up again.

Harry just laughed, but suddenly he realized. He looked down at the bar where Draco sat drinking a strong drink.

"Who are you watching?" asked Ginny and turned around. "Is he sitting and drinking alcohol? Can you do it and then go back to school?"

"Oh ..." Harry released the penetrating glance he received from Draco, who looked totally indifferent, almost a bit pissed off. "I do not know. Are we done?" he then asked and looked down on his half-portion on the plate.

On my way back to school, Ginny tried to start a conversation all the time, until she gave up completely. Harry could not stop thinking about the look he received from Malfoy. It did not tell him anything, but why did he look for their way for so long? Their relationship would be secret?

…

For the rest of the day, Harry spent trying to do some semi-romantic and cute things for Ginny. He gave her chocolate, as Ron had told him about, and read a poem that Hermione had chosen. He blushed quite a bit while reading while Ginny laughed, but she thought about the thought. When it was evening and time for dinner they went down to the big room together to eat. They walked hand in hand through the corridor.

What was so nice about Ginny was that she was not as clumsy as many girls seemed to be at her boyfriends at this school (he was thinking especially when Ron was together with Lavender Brown), but she could as well be hanging out with Harry as if they were just friends. It was Harry who had taken her hand.

"You seem a little happier nowadays, that's fine." Ginny laughed encouragingly where they sat next to each other in the dining room.

"Well, I have not noticed." replied Harry. "How can you tell?"

"I do not know ... you're laughing a little more. I just feel like you're feeling better now. I hope you do that?"

Harry began to think about the reason, and the person who could be behind his new good mood. "I think I feel more relaxed." He smiled at Ginny who logged back.

Neither Neville, Dean nor the twins Wibbly had returned to the Gryffindor tower at seven o'clock in the evening. Harry lay in bed with Ginny by his side. They had just laughed and talked about everything possible. She would stay there until the others came, then she would go to bed.

"How long do you think they're gone?" asked Ginny and drew her finger over Harry's chest.

"I do not know. How so?"

"I just wonder how long we have." She got up and started kissing Harry slowly. "Thought if we could finish what I started last night."

Harry, who could not understand that this actually happened, kissed Ginny back and began to pull her fingers through her hair. But he retired. "Are you sure? Because you said that you did not want to do anything before you marry."

"But you want to?" She bent down to continue kissing Harry.

He just pushed her away and sat down in bed. He did not want to hurt her feelings, so he smiled when he said, "You get patience. I guess it will be worth the wait."

Actually, he thought of Draco. At the same moment he made the intercourse with Ginny, he would lose what he had with the Slytherin life. He knew that he would soon be able to deal with everything he had done with the lies. But at the moment he just wanted to push everything aside and cheat without thinking too much about it.

"You're right, sorry." log ginny a little shameful.

Just then, Neville came in. He had just been to Hogsmeade together with Luna. Ginny kissed Harry good night, even fixed at just five minutes past nine, then went to bed. They both were very tired and would be up for hours before the breakfast to train with the team. Ron and Hermione would come back to school at five o'clock next morning. Sunday was the last day they could train, because Gryffindor would have matched Slytherin on Monday night.


	12. On the other side of the fence

**On the other side of the fence**

It was Sunday, and Draco couldn't remember when he had ever felt worse than he did today. Yesterday he had tried to sweep away because he knew he couldn't celebrate it with the one he wanted to be with most of all. He passed the transfer test the week before, so after seeing Harry with the Weasley girl inside the Three brooms in Hogsmeade for him home to empty his father's bar and drink up several bottles of wine inside the dormitory at Hogwarts. Zabini, Nott and Goyle had let him be the whole evening; they didn't want to get into what Draco went through right now.

So now he woke up at half past two in the afternoon with throbbing head and rippling stomach. After vomiting out all his weight in the toilet, he went to the plug horse's room in Slytherin's student home. His name was John Finn. Finn had everything you could get from the potion room in his room, so he could quickly cook in order what Draco wanted. He wanted backfill extract, and had to pay two gallons for it.

"Greedy bastard." Draco said when he received the bottle of the drink.

"Alcoholic." Finn muttered and closed the door.

Draco drank everything in a sip and already felt much better. He could not go down to eat because he had missed lunch, so he instead went to his room to sleep away the last of the backfill. 

…

In the evening he went with Goyle to the large dining room. Some Gryffindor pupils walked in front of them and Draco did not start listening to them until he heard two names that caught his interest. 

"Potter ... Weasley ..." said the girls in front of him. He increased the speed so he could hear more. "He relieved her yesterday, and she said yes. They will marry next summer." 

"Oh, what fun for them. I don't even have a boyfriend ..." said the other girl. 

Draco stopped. Had Harry been to Weasley? Would they be married soon? So that's what he did right in front of the nose of Draco on Three brooms? 

"Malfoy?" Goyle, who had passed Draco, looked back. "What is it?" 

"Nothing." muttered Draco and walked by with definite steps. 

Had Draco listened to the whole conversation he had heard that they were talking about Potter's friend Weasley had been free to Hermione, but now it was already late.

…

The rest of the day had been in the dark, and Draco didn't wake up until he was inside the locker room the next day. He had been on lessons for a whole day without paying much attention to it. He had not been contactable since dinner last night.

Warrington snapped his fingers in front of Draco. "I asked if we have any tactics? The match will begin in a few minutes."

"Oh, uh ... no. Just drive, as usual. Remember that the guard is their weak point. There will be the hunters who guard the goal most. Get rid of the hunters and then make goals." he blasted on.

The others seemed happy with it, so they asked nothing more.

Once inside the stadium, the Slytherin team was presented. Draco went up to the center where Madam Hooch stood with Harry Potter, who was the team captain of Gryffindor's team. "Shake hands, team captains." said Hooch automatically, she had been a judge for many years now.

Draco stretched out his hand and looked straight into Potter's eyes, but Potter smiled a little as they shook hands. Draco didn't touch a mine, and it made Potter shocked to look elsewhere.

"Up on your brooms!" cried Hooch to both teams and everyone sat down on their brooms.

She first let go of the wimp, then the thumps and took out the lump and moved closer to the center. Potter kept his eyes on the quick as he seemed to be troubled by the look Draco gave him.

"On my signal. Three, two, one ..." whistle sounded, Hooch threw up the lump in the air and then the match was running.

The commentator, a student Draco did not recognize but who was from Hufflepuff, told everyone that Slytherin's destroyer now approached Gryffindor's goal line.

Draco flew in distractions, without paying more attention to where the wicker could be, and saw that even though he had not been very helpful inside the dressing room - his law still had his advice. The batsmen just set off each and every one of the drunkards on the Weasley girl and another of Gryffindor's hunters. Draco laughed as he saw how wicked Weasley got in his shoulder and roared with anger.

"Ten points to Slytherin!" shouted the Huffle puffer.

Potter looked at Draco's hold just as he laughed well to himself, and he looked angry.

Gryffindor got a goal almost immediately after, then Slytherin scored two goals. "Potter has got a glimpse of the woman!"

Three quarters of the students in the stands began to shout and cheer on pots that flew with almost breakneck speed outside the arena. Draco felt he had to hook up now so no one would suspect he had already tired. The otherwise gray sky began to darken. Top, Draco thought, should it start raining now too ...

Pots flew over the forbidden forest and then straight down between the trees. It bore him, but Draco knew he would have to follow suit. All of a sudden he solidified, three feet from the ground while trying to look for pots, dropped his grip on the broom and fell down to the ground. He just lay there on the hard coniferous mat, without being able to touch anything except the eyes that flattened around. Had Potter used the body lock-up spell on him?

Draco heard a thumb right at his head and tried to look that way. "What is your problem?" said Potter angrily. "I know we're going to keep this secret, but do you have to act like an grandeur ass?"

Draco did not get a sound while Potter walked around squatting so they could look at each other.

"I'm starting to suspect that it was your plan, right? Breaking the arm at Ginny? What has she done to you?"

Draco opened his eyes. What could he say? Potter pointed with the wand at Draco, now he could move again, and talk. "So? If it was my plan then?" Draco sat down and rubbed his back with the back of his hand, he had been hurt after the fall. Then he looked at Potter's second hand. "Is that quick?"

Pots kept their wives tight in their left fist, the silver wings spreading out between their fingers. "It would look stupid if it appeared there over while we're here."

"Why did you bring me here?" Draco stood up and brushed off wet soil and left snow from the clothes. "We must continue with the game."

"Sure, but can you leave my girlfriend outside this, please?"

"Rather, the fiancee ..." muttered Draco, went away a bit to fetch his broom and sat down on it again.

"What did you say?"

"Don't you think I've heard? Potter freed his beloved Weasley on Valentine's Day. Rumors are, of course, but I saw you too. How dare you kneel before her in front of me?"

"What are you talking about?" Potter stepped off his own broom he had just sat down and made quick steps towards Draco. "It was you who wanted to leave the emotions outside this. I have asked you several times and I have not ..."

"It doesn't matter anymore, Potter. We forget that this has ever happened."

"You mean ..." Potter began to hot.

"Yes, this is over now." Draco interrupted. "Get married to your slut you, so ..." but Draco didn't speak clearly because he had got a hard fist stroke straight over his jaw.

"Don't you dare call Ginny slut!" Potter muttered between clenched teeth.

Draco pushed his hand against his jaw and looked up at Potter just in time to see him drop off quickly. They stood and stared at each other for a while.

"Do you want to win? Take the quick. Take it." Pots kicked off the ground and flew straight up between the canopies.

When the anger was released, Draco knew how he had instead begun to tremble throughout his body. He had been cheated by Potter and his friends before, but not in this way. Not like this. He kicked up in the air and slowly flew back to the arena, then he could see something a little glittering down by the ground, just outside the stadium. Draco flew down and caught the quick, flying over the stands and down to the ground. The Slytherin team and the students cheered and applauded the victory.

But still he did not feel like he had won.

…

The same evening, the pupils resumed as usual again. They celebrated extra hard today because it was basically the first time they had won against Gryffindor, honestly. But it was not honest, Potter had handed the man to Draco. He had, of course, given up. It didn't seem like they would have their usual meeting tonight as they used to. Draco participated in the celebration, albeit very stunned, just to get rid of what he felt right now.

"So what happened in the woods? Potter looked pretty upset when he came back. Had you been beaten?" asked Nott.

"Nah ... Nothing happened. We chased the quick, then disappeared and we flew back. Then I found it again and took it."

"You're really the best searcher there is!" said Astoria Greengrass with waving eyelashes.

She pressed herself against Draco, who was leaning against a wall. 

"Well ..." Draco sighed, bent down to kiss her and pulled her to his dorm. 

…

The evening continued and the people just got more and more drunk. Someone had been bustling at the entrance of the Slytherin House a few times, but it can only be someone from Slytherin, because no one else knows where Slytherin's entrance is anywhere.

When it knocked for the sixth time while everyone had just ignored, Draco really got annoyed and went there. He opened the door, but as expected no one stood there. "Fun. Do you have fun now?" he shouted blindly into the corridor.

"That's me." 

"Potter?" 

"Get out and close the door." 

Draco lowered his voice. "Never talk to me again." he was just about to close the door, but an invisible hand grabbed it. 

"Please, sorry for beating you. Everything just blackened. Sorry." 

"Drop the door." 

"Please, just listen." 

"Drop it, I said." 

"Can't we talk about it?" 

"No, go now." 

Potter finally released the door, and Draco entered again. But he went through the living room, took a bottle of wine along the way and then went into the room and lay down on the bed. He felt the scorching sensation in his nose and throat and took large sips from the bottle.

.

.

.

Almost two months later, in early May, it was time for the N.E.W.T graduation. Draco already knew he wouldn't be able to do it, but he also knew he would have disappointed his mother if he hadn't tried.

On the first day, he studied with the others in his class in the living room. Theodor Nott, for example, was a bit of a design student, so Draco decided to sit next to him.

The first test was a writing that was with Professor Binns, the only teacher who was a ghost. During the writing, Draco could not concentrate, he sat in the big hall together with the other seventh-year students from the other student homes. They were twice as many this year, since no one had been able to do the tests when the Lord of Darkness had taken over the school. 

Draco saw Potter a few places in front of his own. He wrote a little, looked up at the ceiling and looked like he was thinking. Then he looked back and saw Draco. Both looked away simultaneously. 

Draco just sat and scribbled in the corner of his parchment. He didn't even understand the first question. He left the parchment after one hour, and had answered (probably wrong) on only ten questions out of thirty.

"Are you sure you don't want to continue trying, Mr. Malfoy? You still have an hour and a half left on you." Professor Binns whispered after having quickly examined the sample.

But Draco just continued through the hall without answering, and went past Potter on the way out.

The second test was practice, in transformation art. There were professors there who did not belong to the school, like the fifth year during the O.W.L tests. They would judge the students how good they were in practice. Draco's task was to turn the table in front of him into a unicorn and back. Of course he failed with that and the other tasks after that, so he had to leave the room quite quickly. 

He ate lunch with some other students who had also been quick with the tests and then went up to the astronomy tower to have a personal writing together with Professor Sinistra. 

"Hope you can do the practical test better tonight, Mr Malfoy." said the professor with a pity smiling at Draco as he got up to go. 

"I don't care ..." he just mumbled and walked away. 

The rest of the day was double-hour in potion art, as the icing on the cake, along with the Gryffindor pupils. He also did not pass the writing in Astronomy at night, but he still knew he had tried. 

…

That night, the seventeenth of May, Draco lay on his bed and looked up at the ceiling. He was dull most of the time, and even, at the same time. He did not feel happiness, just as before he had begun to meet Potter. Just that now it was much worse.

Potter left Draco anyway now, they hadn't talked to each other for more than three weeks. The last time they talked to each other was when Potter had attempted to start a conversation in the dragon art lesson three weeks ago, but Draco had just ignored him, and finally told Potter that he would stop trying because Draco had a girlfriend then left. Pots him alone.

The night when Draco pulled in Astoria Greengrass to his dorm for the first time, he decided that he could just as well try to be straight again; It made no use for him to be so confused and unhappy in love with one who refused to leave his girlfriend. Of course, Astoria Draco just dumped a few weeks after that, as he treated her as badly as he had treated Pansy Parkinson's, but no one needed to know.

The grass was certainly not greener on the other side of the fence, Draco had thought and sadly laughed at by his own joke without thinking that he was the least funny.


	13. The election

**The election**

The week after the first tests it was time for the writing and the practical test in Herbology.  
Since the afternoon, the writing and practice of magic art would be.

Hermione was almost hysterical where she sat, day in and day out, and checked so that the bushy hair almost started to smoke. Ron was also not very helpful, as soon as he opened his mouth she sniffed, and it silenced him.

"Imagine that this is how to be engaged." Ron muttered to Harry as they sat on the couch together the night before the two day trial. "Had I known it, I would never have left her alone."

"She's just stressed out." whispered Harry and looked away at Hermione where she sat in the corner and read through several books while making notes.

"In the past, she was just as eager to help us study alone. But now ..." Ron looked at her just as she threw a big and heavy book so that it landed on the floor with a bang. "It feels like I'm no longer there."

"Don't take it personally. You know how she is. Come on, we'll continue now."

Hermione just groaned and blew like a madman up the ceiling. "Can you both be kind and quiet? Or do I have to steal Harry's mantle to take me to a quieter room?"

"Sorry darling."

"We'll be quieter." Harry whispered. "Sorry."

"Thank you.

Ron looked mean to Harry who shrugged his shoulders. Ginny, who had already tired of Hermione's constant outbursts, had gone to bed early this evening. She was already pretty good at the lessons in herbal medicine, so she thought she didn't need to study any more tonight.

When the clock was two at night, Harry began to feel really tired. He pushed to Ron, who had fallen asleep on the couch, on his shoulder and showed with his thumb that they would go into the dormitory.

"Can I say good night without you tearing my head off?" yawned Ron and went to the table where Hermione sat.

"Certainly." she muttered, looked up and smiled tired. "Good night."

They kissed each other, then Harry and Ron went to bed. They fell asleep.

The ground cracked under the feet where Harry walked on the stepped path in the forest. He only went without having any special goal in front of him. The forest opened in front of him, the trees slid aside and he reached a glade with a small lake in the middle. He didn't understand how there could be such a small lake here without having evaporated, nor was it particularly deep.

Harry squatted right in front of the lake, rather the big pool, and looked down into the water. He saw his own reflection, but without the glasses. His face first looked as indifferent to him, then it was distorted by pain and screamed a silent scream at him.

Harry fell backwards. He understood something was wrong. Suddenly Malfoy rose behind a tree on the other side of the pool.

"Of course you are." said Harry, but his voice echoed strangely in the glade. "Do you want to talk now?"

But Malfoy said nothing. He just continued forward, with the wand wanderingly hanging beside him.

"What are you doing?"

Malfoy stood with his feet in the water, continued to take several steps towards the middle and released the rod.

"Draco? What are you doing?"

Long octopus arms slowly slid up Malfoy's body, snagging around him, slowly pulling him down into the pool.

"Draco, no! Get out of there!" Harry got up on his legs and ran towards the pool, but it just seemed like it slipped further and further away from him. "Fight, Draco! You have to fight!" he could not find his wand in any of his pockets, turned around and saw it lying a few meters behind him. "Wait, I'll save you!"

Harry ran back, picked up the rod and pointed to the water. But neither Draco nor the octopus were left.

"Draco ..." Harry whispered.

"Draco? Why do you dream about him?" whispered Ron's voice.

"What?" Harry opened his eyes. He lay in his bed. It was dark in the room.

"You whispered Malfoy's name. What do you dream about?"

"Oh ... I dreamed ... I dreamed we chased the wick. And he waved it in front of me, saying I would tell his name if I wanted it."

"Well ... what a strange thing. You said his name quite a few times, otherwise I wouldn't have woken up."

"Okay ... yes, it was strange."

Ron started snoring again.

Harry lay on his back and began to drum with his fingertips against the blanket, then he opened the curtain for the bed, grabbed his glasses on the bedside table, quickly pulled on his jeans with the wand in the back pocket, pulled out the invisibility jacket under the mattress and went out to the living room.

He couldn't bear it anymore. He couldn't do this. Now he would put Malfoy against the wall, demanding an answer to the question he had asked him for months now. Harry couldn't fall in love with two people anymore, and he had already chosen which one he wanted. Now it was up to Malfoy to choose how he wanted it.

His wristwatch showed that the watch was three at night when Harry looked, he had only slept for an hour. When he arrived at the entrance to the Slytherin's room down by the dungeons, he knocked on the door. He stood and struck for five minutes until a head of department opened it with the wand.

"What on the weekend ..." but he was shocked that no one was standing in front of him.

Harry slipped past the prefect and walked into the living room. The last time he was here was six years ago, and now the first problem arose; what room did Draco sleep in?

The headman muttered and swore to himself while walking towards a small corridor. Harry followed. He opened a door and Harry sneaked in with him. If Draco were not there, he would only wait until the head of department had fallen asleep so that he could sneak out again.

"Was it the bus knocker again?" asked another guy in the bedroom to sleep.

"It's certainly Peeves who are on. I'll ask the Bloody Baron to crack him tomorrow. I can't bear this, it's a five-hour trial!"

Harry walked silently through the room and looked down into the six beds that stood out with the edges. But Draco was not in any of them. He stood by the door again to wait for the students to fall asleep in there.

It took ten minutes before he heard snoring from all the people in there, then he opened the door to go out. He opened the door opposite and peered in, there were four beds. Harry sneaked in and looked down on the beds. At last, Draco lay there and slept deeply. Now he just didn't know how to wake him up. Harry began to push slightly on Draco's shoulder. He snore and turned. Harry pushed harder. Draco opened his eyes and looked around, then he settled on the pillow again.

"Draco?" Harry whispered.

Malfoy screamed and began to scold her arms like a madman.

"Shhh ... it's me ..."

He sat down in bed and held his heart. "Potter?" he whispered low back.

"Do you have nightmares again?" mumbled someone from the corner, Harry heard it was Blaise Zabini. "Can you ever wake up normally, without waking everyone else?"

"Join me to the potion room." breathing Harry in his ear.

"I have to go to the toilet." muttered Draco to Zabini and followed Harry out.

When they came outside Slytherin's room, Harry could see that Draco had no pants on.

"You are here right now? I mean ... I did not dream?" Draco muttered uncertainly as he rubbed his eyes.

"I'm here." Harry assured him, opened the door to the classroom when they arrived and stepped in. Once inside, he took off his invisibility cloak.

"I just can't figure out how to get into my bedroom. I thought the school had some safety rules."

"I just knocked and waited for the head of department to open the door."

"Oh ..." Draco even remembered that he didn't talk to Harry anymore, his tired eyes suddenly became sharp. "What do you want now, then?"

"First of all, I want to say sorry for what I did. It was unjustifiable. Do you forgive me?"

"No."

"You can fight back. Really, really hard. The hardest thing you can do. I deserve it." Harry had never asked for a strike before, so it felt quite strange to do it right now.

"I'm not going to beat you, Potter. Why don't you ever give up?"

"Cast a curse on me, whatever you want."

"Sectumsempra?"

"Yes."

"Crucio?"

"Yes."

"Avada kedavra?"

Harry shouted. "If ... if that's what you want ..."

"Stop playing martyr now, Potter. It's not the slightest pity about you."

"Draco, please! I can't live with you being mad at me! I can't handle it. I have to make you forgive me, I know you have a girlfriend and everything but ..."

Draco had taken the plunge and beat Harry all he could with the knotted fist over his nose, the pain made his eyes run. Harry backed several steps until he hit one of the tables inside the classroom while holding his nose that had already begun to bleed.

"It got silent on you, anyway." muttered Draco and stroked her fist that probably also hurt. "You started to be pathetic."

They both stood silent for a while and tried to gather.

"Do you forgive me now?" Harry moaned, remembering that he had never really managed to heal broken bones.

"Sure ... do you leave me alone now?"

"Never." laughed Harry. "That's why I came too ..." he groaned again and tried to stop the blood flowing down the chin. "Because I want answers now, Draco. Once and for all."

"What do you want answers to?" Draco stood motionless, indifferent. Harry noticed that he just wanted to leave.

"I have to know now ..."

"Let me ..." Draco said annoyedly and pulled out the wand. "Episkey."

Harry felt how his nose immediately healed and the blood stopped running. Draco went forward and began to wipe away a bit with the bottom edge of his gray t-shirt. While standing there gently wiping away blood from Harry's face, Harry looked into his silvery eyes. It had been a long time since he had looked at the Slytherin life up close and felt it irritated his stomach.

Draco's gaze flattened between Harry's eyes and the shirt he was holding. "What?" he muttered annoyedly.

"I can't look away from your eyes, just. They are the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen."

"Harry ..." Draco sighed, stopped drying his face and looked down. "Why do you fuss for everything?"

"I miss you so much. Can't stay away from you."

Harry held his hand under Draco's chin and turned his face up so they could look at each other. He stretched himself to access the lips of the Slytherin liver. At first Draco did not seem to want, but then it was as if a latch was unlocked and they began to kiss for real. Harry had forgotten the feeling but now got all the memories back.

The kisses were eager, and finally Draco groaned and put his hands hard against Harry's waist. He half-pressed Harry back to the school bench, half lifting him up on the table.  
Harry jumped up and sat down, with Draco's body between his thighs.

…

"I had forgotten how that felt." breathing Harry where he lay on the floor with Draco's head on his shoulder for once.

"Me with ..." Draco whispered back. "Do you know what time it is?"

Harry looked at the wall clock ticking above them. "Quarter in four. It's lesson here in four hours."

"And we'll be down to the greenhouses in four hours. I don't want to go ..." Draco hugged Harry harder.

"Can we talk now, then?"

Draco shook his head. "Destroy nothing now, Potter. We'll arrive at something later."

Harry understood what Draco had meant, but he still couldn't bear with the feelings of guilt.

…

In the evening, after all four tests, he took Ginny away and led her down the stairs and out into the school area. They started walking around the lake while Harry tried to figure out what to say. Ginny was silent all the time, it was like she already knew what was going on inside Harry's head.

They talked for hours, Ginny wept a little and Harry was on the verge of doing it several times. He would explain to her as much as possible that it didn't have to do with her, that he only wanted time for himself for a while and thought it felt awful to her who would walk around without getting as much attention as she deserved .

This was the second time Harry ended up with her, just that it was different this time around. The first time was because he didn't want Voldemort to take her away from him, this was because he needed to think.

"We'll still meet, we'll still hang out ... Just not the same way. I'm really sorry about all this." Harry told her after they had started going back to school.

"I understand, Harry. You don't have to continue explaining." She stood in front of him and hugged him. "I will continue to support you, anyway."

"Thank you ... that means a lot to me. And you can talk about everything with me."

"I know."

.

.

.

May passed in June and the second last week at school the rest of the tests would be. Harry studied extensively with Ron, Hermione and Ginny. Hermione didn't say much as usual, Ron tried as best he could and Harry sat the most and read the same line over and over again in his notes. Luna just got into the library where the friends were sitting and studying, and went to Harry.

"Professor McGonagall wanted you something. She's up in her room." said Luna and sat down beside Ginny.

"Thank you, Luna." he picked up his stuff in the bag. "Do you take the bag to the tower if I can't get back?"

"Okay." said Ron.

On the way to the principal's office, Harry encountered Draco in one of the corridors. "Where are you going?" asked Draco in low tone when they came closer together.

"McGonagall. You?"

"Nott and Zabini are waiting in the library. Are we seeing tonight?"

"I'm waiting outside your living room at twelve o'clock."

Draco bent on the lower lip and smiled at Harry, he knew Harry was powerless when he did.

"Oh ... quit ... I'll get up and meet the headmaster now."

"I know ..." Draco muttered and went closer so that their faces were just a few inches apart, with a penetrating look. Then he passed by. "See you."

Harry sighed and continued toward McGonagall's office, he had to fix his pants during the school uniform all the way forward.

He knocked on the door and the professor said, "Come in." Harry stepped in and closed the door, then stood in front of McGonagall's desk. "Have you read more in the book I gave you?" was the first thing she said.

"Uh ..."

"I assumed you didn't have it. Didn't I say it was important, Mr Potter?"

"Yes ... uh ..." Professor McGonagall continued to blame him. "Sorry, Professor. It has been a lot going on, and ..."

"I understand. I guess I have your word that you read through the book before the conclusion?"

"Can I ... get that time on me?"

"Yes, Mr Potter. But then you have to swear that you have read it clearly."

"Of course, Professor McGonagall, I swear."

"Good ... you can go."

Harry started walking toward the door, but turned around. "Professor?"

"Yes?"

"Would you be able to tell me ... what it is I should do when I read the book?"

"Can't we just leave it that it's important?"

"It's just that ... I can't understand why reading a book on Muggle policy and politics in our world is so important."

McGonagall sighed and stood up. "I can't tell you. You must have read the book so that I can tell you what to do afterwards."

"Okay ... Good evening." Harry went out and continued down the stairs.

He hadn't been there so long, so Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Luna stayed in the library when he got there.


	14. Slytherin

**Slytherin**

The weather had become much better in recent weeks. It was June now, and in three days Draco would be nineteen years. Harry had told him he had run out of Ginny, but he also said it wasn't for Draco's sake, for his sake; because he didn't want to play double games anymore, but wanted to wait until his feelings were arranged before making his big choice. When Draco heard it, he was first hurt, because Harry had said he didn't do it for his sake, but after some day it seemed to be over, because now he had Harry for himself. They had still not gone public with what they felt, it was under Harry's orders, so that would have made Draco start thinking again.

He had just finished writing writing spells when it was time for lunch, and he decided to go there with Goyle. "How did the test go?" Draco asked him.

Goyle shouted, he wasn't used to Draco's so talkative and ... happy? "I think it went well."

"Nice to hear, Goyle. I think I may have got almost all right. And I wrote quite a lot, so I think at least I get that sample. "

"That's good, Malfoy ..." grunted Goyle.

They sat down at the Slytherin's table and began to take care of the food. Draco had begun to eat much more now than before, he had become so much better mood since he started meeting Harry at night again and had even started to gain weight - something he did not appreciate much, though. Draco and Harry spent almost every night in Black's old house on Grimmauld place, it was almost like they had moved there. They slept over there more and more often, and back to school again in the morning in time for them to lie down on the beds before their roommates woke up.

Draco looked away at the entrance where Harry and Ron Weasley just came in. Harry looked at the Slytherin table the first thing he did, as he usually does now, and smiled at Draco, and only Draco saw it.

After lunch, the test in divination art should be, seventh-year students would one by one enter Firenze's classroom on the entrance plan and have an oral test with him. While everyone was standing outside, Draco tried to get Harry's attention, and finally he caught it. He pointed his gaze at a corridor and began to walk there, then walked behind the corner to the next crossing. There were almost no students who went through there, so he would be safe. But before he went there, he assured Harry's ex-girlfriend had seen him want Harry to follow.

Just as he had planned, Harry came for a while with a big smile. "What is it?" He whispered.

"I just saw you, and couldn't stay. I can't wait till tonight." Draco pushed his body against Harry's.

Harry responded by pushing up Draco against the wall, he was very strong to be so short. "We can still do nothing here, anyone can see us." He began to kiss Draco's neck and gnawed at his earlobe. Draco pressed his hand against Harry's writing, it made Harry bounce low. "Do not."

"I have to have you now..." Draco bent down to kiss Harry.

And just as he glanced to the left, he saw the Weasley girl standing there with her eyes closed. Draco smiled for himself, but pushed Harry away in a pretense shock. He stared at Ginny, and it made Harry look too.

"Ginny ... wait a while ... I ..." Harry began to stutter, Ginny ran in the opposite direction to the entrance hall. "Ginny!" But he didn't run, he probably realized it was too late.

"I'm so sorry, sorry, I didn't know she would come and spy..." Draco pretended to be remorseful.

Harry shook his head up. "You really have made it for me. Did you see her facial expression?"

"Sorry..." Draco whispered again, a little annoyed this time - how could Harry blame him?

"And soon the whole school will know..."

"Wait now ... are you ashamed of me?" Draco asked the wounded.

"No, or... I don't know. But now we have hurt Ginny, this was the last thing I wanted her to see. I ran out of her a week ago, and said it wasn't her wrong. Then she sees me with you. What do you think has gone through her thoughts then? Just that I've probably been cheating on her for a very long time."

"Listen to me now, Harry Potter." Draco said angry. "Do you think she can expect some kind of excuse from you? If you're gay you can't control that you're not in love with her, who is a girl."

"But I _am_ in love with her!"

Draco looked at Harry with a wrinkled forehead and fired the lower jaw. "You ... you're in love with her? But... what the hell are you doing with _me_!"

"I... you too... both..." Harry said incoherently, it seemed that he had been brain-lipped. "I have to find her." Then he angrily said and started jogging along the corridor.

Draco didn't think much more about what happened in the corridor while he did the test with half-horse. He knew Harry would soon come over and run straight into Draco's arms. But he didn't see him the whole afternoon, nor did Harry stand and wait outside the Slytherin's room which he used to do in the evenings. He sent no patch on all night, and Draco lay sleepless until the sun began to rise.

When the others in the bedroom started to wake up, Draco understood that he might have done wrong in what he did to the Weasley girl. But why would Draco adapt to her and Potter, it was he who had kissed Draco first, and not the other way around! It was Potter who had started everything from scratch, so how could all this be Draco's fault?

He dressed before the others had awakened properly, walked out of the living room and up the stairs, he jogged through the corridors and took two steps at a time up all the stairs to the Gryffindor tower.

The thick lady in the portrait yawned and peeked at Draco with her eyes drunk. "The password?" She asked.

"I can't. I'm waiting for Harry Potter."

"Well..." replied the thick lady. "They soon wake up so you have to wait a little while before someone can come and open for you."

"I don't belong to Gryffindor."

"Which student home do you belong to?" She wondered, was immediately alert to him.

"You don't need to know."

"But then so. Wait here for Harry Potter. But please if you try to sneak out the password, because then you get with the headmaster..."

"I don't care what you think. What should you do? You are stuck in a chalkboard!"

The thick lady woke up and embarrassed her chest. "It knew me - a Slytherin student, of the worst kind!" She turned around in the chalkboard so she stood with her back to Draco.

Draco snorted and backed a few steps, he didn't really want to get any problems... If the other students came out before Harry they would surely drive him away, and here there were no corridors he could hide in. He leaned against the wall and wished to he had had Potter's invisibility mantle...

After just a few minutes a bunch of guys thirteen years went out through the portrait, they yawned but laughed happily until they got a look at Draco who stood leaning against the stone wall.

"Isn't it..." one of the guys began and pointed to the slytherin life.

They all looked down at his arm - as if he were to stand waving the mark open all day - and then ran away after receiving an angry glance from Draco.

Several people walked out through the portrait hole and almost stumbled upon his face, but after half an hour a person came out and called him.

"Granger!" Hermione Granger looked back at him, but stretched her lips and then went down the stairs. "Granger!" Draco shouted higher and ran after. "Granger..."

She knocked off the hand he had put on her shoulder to stop her. "Oh, what do you want?" She groaned and turned so fast that her hair was around her.

Draco straightened and laid the facial muscles in a more elevated position. "Would you be able to get..."

"He is not at school. Thanks to you..!" Granger looked around, lowered her voice. "Thanks to you, he disappeared before he could finish the final tests."

"But…"

"We know all about you." She paused to gather. "Ginny got very upset, they couldn't even be in the same room, so Harry stacked. We don't know where he is." She turned and continued down the stairs.

Draco ran past her and continued down to the entrance hall, he threw up the large oak doors wide and rushed out into the school area. He knew he violated several school rules and would certainly be relegated to the dot, but he didn't care.

When he finally reached the outskirts of the small village of Hogsmeade, he turned his heel and rushed through time and space. Because he had already been here several times, he knew he was coming right. Draco had ended up on the top step outside the house on Grimmaul place number twelve, but instead of opening the door he had to hold the railing to the stairs so as not to faint. He had run all the way from the castle to the village, without stopping to rest or to breathe. But he couldn't wait too long, so after a deep breath he knocked on the door.

"Harry? Are you there?" No answer, so he continued to knock (because he couldn't cry out any more) until the door opened.

"Mr. Malfoy, sir, are you?"

"Is Harry here?"

Krake waited for a while to answer. "No." he choked.

"You're lying! Drop me in!" Draco started pushing the door, but it was unshakable. The elf certainly pressed his own magic from the inside. "Crack!" He warned.

"Mr. Potter is not at home. He's out on the matter."

Draco tried to calm down. "May I come in and wait for him?"

One more break. "No."

"Harry, I know you're in there!" He shouted now through the gap in the door. "I know you're standing there shaking your head for the alpha, let me in now!"

The door clicked a few times and then it went up, Draco stepped in and closed behind him. Harry sat on the stairs inside the hall and looked up at Draco with a rather empty facial expression.

"You don't fool me so easily," Draco said to him. "Why are you hiding here in the dark?" But Harry didn't answer. Draco shrugged and leaned toward the door with crossed arms. "Why are you doing so that everything becomes my fault?" He asked without hesitation.

"What?"

"Why do you make me upstairs? Why do I have to suffer for all this?"

"You... why _you_ gotta suffer?" Harry said excitedly.

"Yes I!"

"Don't forget it was you who ran after me at school all day!" Harry got up and went toward Draco. "I tried to avoid you, but you just continued and continued! Do you remember the day I trained with my team? When you lay hidden under the bench? I saw you, but tried not to bother me!"

"Oh, yeah, so I followed you?" Draco replied equally excitedly.

"Why else would you spy on me?"

"Okay! Maybe I did, but it was you who sent that note that night, it was you who kissed me, it was you who started everything! You were cheating on your girlfriend, you continued to meet me even though you were with her. You messed everything up, and yet I'm the one who gets the debt!"

Harry opened his mouth but seemed speechless. "Do you even hear yourself when you talk?" He whispered.

"What do you mean?" Draco wondered.

"Don't you hear how pampered and ego tripped you sound? That everything is about you, that you're in the middle... Do you think, quite frankly, that it's only you who feel bad?"

"I don't think that only I feel bad. But you throw away everything, without ever explaining anything to me. Like now, you hid here without saying anything. I was waiting for you last night, but did you come? I waited for a letter, but you wrote nothing. Your girlfriend saw you with another guy, and the last thing I hear from you is that you should find her, but then nothing more. Completely empty."

"Exactly what do you think we two mean to each other?"

"Don't pull it up now, Harry." Draco half said the panic and shook his head. "It's really not time for it now."

"So when is it time for it, then? What? When is this time for this conversation?" Harry took a step closer, looked a little crazy. "The first time we kiss each other? No... A few weeks into the relationship? No... not then... but a few months then?" He shook his head. "When I finished doing my girlfriend? Even then, there is something special between us. So, if we are not in a serious relationship, with any feelings at all involved - according to you, why do you think I have some kind of responsibility to keep you happy?"

Draco had completely lost his ability to speak. He felt how it started to wiggle in his nose and eyes, but still couldn't get a sound.

"I thought so. You should go back to school now and finish the tests. I have my own problems... Don't come back, I'm done with you."

Harry leaned closer to Draco, who was now pushed up against the door, but just stretched toward the door knob to open it. When he then backed to go up the stairs, Draco burst. The tears began to drain and the stomach cramped.

"So you... so you..." he got out with an effort before Harry took a step in the stairs. But he just stopped, neither turned around nor answered. He froze in the middle of the step.

Draco didn't know how to continue, but sobbed only where he stood, still pressed against the wall next to the door. Harry sighed and took a step up the stairs.

"Wait..." Draco sobbed. He knew he would have to say this now, otherwise he would lose this amazing man forever. "I love you..." Harry backed down the step, but still didn't turn around, so Draco continued, "I've always done that." His breath tore and tore his chest while the tears slid down the cheeks. "I just didn't know I did it... or... I didn't dare admit it to myself... you're the best person I've ever met in my life. I never thought I would ever meet someone like you, didn't know that one you existed... February was a hell for me... to see you with her... "

"Why do you come and say this now..." Harry sighed with his back still facing.

"I know we should have talked about this a long time ago; but it has been difficult for me to adapt, I know it has been for you, I'm not alone about it. But now, now that you got off school, I knew it was getting serious. Sorry because I made Weasley angry with you, but I had to, otherwise you would keep following her. I knew that if you were two, you would just have me left. You have no idea…"

But Harry interrupted him. "Wait, wait, wait..." he mumbled tiredly and turned around completely so that he could look at Draco. "So it was not of a coincidence that Ginny came into the corridor... You... ohhh..." he sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if he had finally understood something. "You lured me in there, made sure she followed, and then started to snog me up... in the middle of a corridor... and you knew she would go there because she would be worried about seeing us go there alone... you knew she would think there could be a fuss between us."

"I'm sorry..." Draco truthfully whispered.

Harry shook his head and laughed impatiently. "She thought..." he said out loud and looked up at the roof again while his crazy smile spread across his face. "She went after me and thought 'best I keep track of Harry, because I have to protect him if something happens'... she followed me because she cares about me... And YOU!" Draco who jumped on. "All you do is hurt everyone around me! Don't you see how hard this thing took on her? I've been an asshole against her all this year, because I've been with you! And your solution to it all is that she should even see it with her own eyes!"

Harry roared and screamed so that he spat out of his mouth. Draco prepared himself with his hand in his pocket, if he were to have to protect himself, but said nothing.

"Out..." mumbled Harry, and without Draco answering, he screamed, "OUT!" Right in the face of the blonde.

"Here's why I didn't want to fall for you, Potter; I knew I was just going to be crushed." Draco whispered, went out the door and stood with his back to the door, ready to hear the bang from it.

But the bang never came, instead he felt a few lips toward his ear. "Be sure to be more open in your next relationship." Draco shook and heard him go back to the door. "We both agreed not to interfere in any of this, but now it's already late." He had calmed down a bit. "But I think we have broken too much between us right now... This we will not be able to fix. Everything has become far too complicated." Draco didn't understand what he was talking about, but dared not turn around to ask with the risk that he would start shouting again. "I need space, Draco. Can you give me that?"

Draco nodded stiffly and immediately began to feel the tears trying to penetrate again. Without a final word, the door was carefully closed behind him. Harry had closed it without saying goodbye. Without saying he loved Draco back.


	15. The funeral (FINAL)

**The funeral**

The leaves on the trees outside the kitchen window were in all the colors of the autumn, the wind picked up some of them, folded a chair out in the yard.

"Can you pick up the furniture?" Ginny asked, who just got into the kitchen to have a cup of coffee.

Harry, who had already eaten his breakfast, got up and went toward the hall. He took down his jacket that hung on a hook and fumbled in his feet in a pair of slippers. Once out in the front yard, he took a deep breath of the fresh breeze, but soon for a new gust of air across the street and ruffled to his otherwise very unruly hair. He was looking in the jack pocket for the storage keys and went to the side of the house where the store was standing, unlocking the door and starting to carry the chairs that had not yet fallen to the ground.

After hanging off his jacket in the hall again, Ginny shouted from the kitchen: "We forgot to buy potatoes tonight ..."

"I go to the store. If you stay and eat your breakfast, I am back before you finish. "

"You're the best ..." she sighed. "Don't forget the newspaper!" She shouted before he closed the door.

The muggle magazine that came every morning would be in the mailbox, so Harry took it in the bypass and sat down in the car in the driveway. He put the newspaper on the seat next to him, started the car and drove off.

It only took five minutes before he arrived at the store, found a free parking and parked. So early in the morning you always got the best spot, closest to the store. Harry looked to the side to snap up the seat belt when he saw it. Not only did the mug magazine come in the muggle mailboxes anymore, but The Daily Prophet had started to be there (at least in muggle areas) nowadays along with the regular post, and on the front page of The Daily Prophet he saw a familiar face looking straight at him. That pale skin, the silvery eyes and the blonde hair ... At the top of the page, above his image, it said:

 _Highly appreciated heir and husband, Draco Malfoy, found dead in his home._

Harry couldn't believe his eyes. He immediately released everything he was supposed to do and pulled up the newspaper to his eyes. He opened the page that the news would be on and began to read.

 _On the night of today, Wednesday, September 1, 2021, at 23:46, the Aurors at the Ministry of Troll received an alarm call from Malfoy's residence. Draco Malfoy's wife, Astoria Malfoy, 39, came with the miserable message._

 _"I had been out with the girlfriends on a girl's night when I decided to go home early," a tearful Astoria Malfoy told The Daily Prophet's posted journalist, "I wanted to go straight to our bedroom. When I came in I saw that Draco was not sleeping there, as he usually does at that time. "_

 _Astoria had begun to walk towards the bathroom, which is connected with their bedroom, where the door was glowing and it shone from the room. When she opened the door, she was met by a vision that will haunt her forever, she has told._

 _"There was no blood," she says before she breaks down before our own posted journalist, Rita Skeeter._

 _Draco Malfoy had used the "Avada Kedavra" curse on himself. And for you who do not know what it is ..._ _  
_  
There, Harry stopped reading.

He couldn't figure out how all this was hanging together. Admittedly, he hadn't talked to Draco since ... when everything happened for all those years ago; but he saw the blonde just a day ago - in the Diagon alley. Draco had been with his wife and son and they all seemed so happy ... seemed ... It was unreal, there wasn't in his world that ... Draco Malfoy ... had taken his life. He had a wife who loved him, they had a son together. A young boy who Harry probably wouldn't see at Kings Cross Station that day.

Didn't he meet well? Didn't he have a good life? How could Draco just give up like that ...

Harry went into the store, bought potatoes, left everything at home, and told Ginny that he would take a walk. Harry had not worked last night, then he would have found out all this beforehand. Reading it in a newspaper had really moved on to his entire everyday life ... but how did he react if he was one of them to go to Malfoy's mansion? How had he reacted when he saw ...

He read through the article a few more times after he had found a park bench to sit on down by the harbor. It still blew cold outside and the wind caused the water to splash up sometimes so it felt like drizzle in his face and hands. He closed the newspaper and looked at the picture of Draco again. He had read many newspaper articles about him without noticing how much he had really aged; the bags under Draco's eyes, dark spots, wrinkles on the forehead, thinner hairline ... Here was the evidence, proof that Draco didn't really feel good. He looked sick in the picture on the front. Even though the mouth smiled, there was no spark in the bright eyes. There was no fire in his soul. He was empty. Empty.

A drop that was not from the harbor edge fell down on the newspaper.

How could he let it go so far? Harry had long hated Draco for what he did so many years ago. But deep down ... What was there to be so angry about? Draco wanted Harry to make a decision ... a decision he had already taken long ago, a decision that never got results. Here was the result. But Harry couldn't care less about this ... Not now. He has a wife whom he loves and three wonderful children. His eldest son would go his last year at Hogwarts, they would all go to school today. But not Scorpius, Draco and Astoria's son. He would be too sad, too desperate, to go to school today.

Everything was back now, everything was upside down. A world without Draco Malfoy is not a world anymore. He has ruined too many people through his selfish actions. How could he do such a thing?

 _By pronouncing the words "Avada kedavra", one kills his victim directly. But it's not as simple as it sounds. First, this is the curse; together with Cruciatus and Imperio; one of the forbidden curses and is strictly forbidden to use. If you use one of these three, you will receive a direct free ticket to Azkaban, where you will be awarded the talked about "Dementor kiss" where the victim who has broken the law loses his soul. It's a fate worse death._

 _To use any of these curses, one must absolutely and directly mean them; one cannot just pronounce the words and expect something to happen. One must sincerely want his victim bad, or in this case, himself._

 _Mr Malfoy, 41, had therefore used one of the curses, "Avada Kedavra", on himself, and died the same second. It is the first time in history that this has been reported, that a wizard or witch would have pronounced it on himself, and succeeded…_

Harry closed the paper again. He had succeeded. In order for the curse to work, you really have to mean it. Draco had really meant it. He didn't want to live. If he had not just hoped that something would happen, something might go wrong and he would survive. Just to get Harry's attention again. Another person who survived the curse. Harry would come to the hospital where Draco lay ... And they would start talking again.

But at the same time, he wanted it to happen, because he actually died… Draco didn't want to live anymore. What went through his head before he did it? What went through his head ... just before ...

Without being able to stop, Harry turned around and vomited in the hedge behind the bench. Between the vomiting came the tears, sobs. How could he go back to a normal life after this? Now that he knew he, Harry, was probably a reason why a man had gone too early. A man forced to live with a woman he did not love. To a life filled with politics, stress ... The life he wanted least of all, but that was all he could get because he had no choice. A life his father had already set out for him, a life he had not chosen himself.

"How dare you..." Harry muttered, hanging over the park bench. "How dare you!?" he screamed, facing the sea storming the wind. "How dare you do something like this? Now? Before we got the chance to meet again! How dare you... " he sat down again with his face buried in his hands. "How dare you leave me without a word..."

Harry wiped the tears against the jacket. He heard steps behind the gravel path and quickly stopped the newspaper inside the jack pocket.

"How are you?" Asked a voice behind him. It was Ginny.

Harry didn't think she'd heard him because of the wind and the waves that hit the edge of the harbor hard.

"Come on we go home. I have to get to work soon." Harry got up, turned to his wife, and they went to the house together.

Once in the ministry, Harry didn't feel like talking to anyone at all but nodded politely to the people who passed by. He went through the large welcome hall with the statue of himself, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood, who stood in the middle. That statue had been erected the same day as Harry and Ron had passed the Auror course and began their work there as Aurors.

He recalled the book Professor McGonagall had given him the task of reading; the only reason it was to prepare him for the Auror job, and no matter how annoyed Harry had been over her helpfulness; He still felt grateful - that book had actually helped him a lot.

"Good morning," said Ron, who had been waiting on the other side of the statue, as he used to. "Have you heard?"

"Good morning. Yes." Harry replied without looking at him, just kept walking toward the elevators.

"They have found a thing on the body that they wanted us to investigate."

"Should we investigate?" Harry asked and stopped. "It's not our job."

"They wanted us to do it because they couldn't do it themselves. We knew him before, so they thought we could help."

Harry didn't want to see the body, but he knew he had to because it was his job now.

He and Ron transferred together to the mortuary where Draco Malfoy's body was, but he didn't find out what it was he was going to investigate until they had arrived. An investigator greeted them when they arrived and led them into an illuminated room with an examination table inside the rear wall. On the table lay a body, with a white sheet over.

"We found a few words engraved on his left arm, just above the death mark." The investigator carefully pulled the sheet off the left arm and turned it.

Harry walked slowly forward and peered at the arm around Ron, who had decided to look.

 _Space enough?_

"Do you know what that means, Harry?" Ron asked.

"I'm not sure..." he got out, but he certainly knew what that meant.

He thought back to the time the two men had spoken last. They had been angry, Draco had finally explained his feelings, and Harry had coldly told him he needed space and asked if Draco could give it to him.

He felt how his stomach and neck contracted again but did everything in his power to stay calm. "Would I be able to get a minute for myself? I'll pick you up when I'm done."

There was nothing strange that an Auror wanted to be left alone when he thought out things, so Ron and the investigator went straight to the door and closed it after they left the room.

"You fucking idiot." Harry whispered. "So typically you, Malfoy, to blame me at last. I know you didn't mean that, but..." Harry pulled the sheet off his face.

The blonde hair lay flat over his forehead, his eyes closed. His emaciated face once looked out for free. The last time Harry met him was the day before in the Diagon alley. They had not greeted each other but they had seen each other; then Draco had looked very tired, Harry could sense himself now, and his eyes had been a little red-edged and shiny.

How could he not have seen the characters before?

"It's always drama around you." He gently pulled his hair away from Draco's face and just looked. A tear started to penetrate the eye, but he didn't want to cry any more, he just wanted this to be over.

 _Was this what you wanted? Did you really want to die, or did you think you could survive? Would you like me to see the mark and be overwhelmed by such blame that I would take you back?_ Thought Harry. _Or did you just want me to be filled with guilt, and see you dead, and repent for the rest of my life?_ _No, it doesn't sound like you, Draco. I think you were hoping to survive, but that you had already given up hope for a good life, so you killed yourself instead._

He stared unexpectedly at Draco's pale face, stroking it, followed the contours with his fingers. "Sorry..." he whispered with feathery fingers against Draco's cheekbones. "Sorry for not coming earlier. For letting you wait, this sounded bad. Sorry I left you alone..."

Harry put the sheet over Draco's empty face again, then he went out and asked Ron to inform the ministry that Harry took the rest of the day off. He never told anyone what he knew; never let anyone know what the message on the blonde man's arm meant; but let everything just be.

On Friday, the funeral was supposed to take place and Harry and his family were not invited. But it is clear; everyone still believed that he and Malfoy had always been enemies during their stay at Hogwarts School; but it didn't stop Harry from going anyway. He stood a little away during the ceremony, which was outdoors at the large cemetery. The weather was really perfect for an outside funeral; it was a sunny and quite warm autumn day in September. Harry was standing beside the tree he had transferred to and didn't go until the coffin was about being hoisted down. The people saw him walking toward the open coffin, and he went after the breath, but they said nothing. Draco's wife Astoria just looked angry at Harry when he arrived at the coffin, but remained on her chair without protesting; no one could say no to an auror?

"What are you doing here?" Narcissa Malfoy asked him anyway.

Harry bowed respectfully to her. "I'm not here to create a scene; I'm just going to say goodbye to the man who once saved my life and show respect for his family."

Lucius Malfoy just nodded silently and put a gentle hand on his wife's knee. She looked at her husband, but then sighed and nodded to Harry.

Except for anyone around, Harry leaned over Draco's pale face and whispered; "Do you think you've been waiting long enough?" He breathed. "I know you're not dead, you have become proficient at potions." He quietly laughed at an old memory. "Do you remember that I promised you that if you could ever influence death, I would never doubt you again?" Harry took a new breath. "I don't understand how you haven't changed at all in all these years..." a sigh. "I'll pick you up tonight."

He nodded respectfully to Astoria, Scorpius, Narcissa, and Lucius Malfoy, who all looked a little suspiciously at Harry, walked through the gates to the cemetery and moved back home. A long night awaited him.


End file.
